


Her

by I_writewhatiwant



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Irish Sarah Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2019-05-06 23:36:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 31,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14658594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_writewhatiwant/pseuds/I_writewhatiwant
Summary: She was by his side since the day she met him, skinny and small and so so kind. She swore she would be by his side for the rest of their lives. She just hoped it meant a long time.In which Steve Rogers is a married man before, during and after he becomes Captain America.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

The eleven years old girl didn't have any friends. It wasn't something that saddened her, not anymore. It was just a fact of her life, like her red hair and how so little Italian she was, despite her last name. She was used by now to eat alone and to spend her time in school alone. Sometimes, wandering alone through the school's yard wasn't that bad. She was happy with just talking to the teachers, really. She didn't mean to be a teacher's pet, but when nobody talked to you, you just held into those who did.

By the time the bell rang, she was ready to go home. She was since the start of the year, to be honest.

It wasn't all that fun, walking alone to an empty house, but it was much better when nobody talked to you because nobody was there, than to be in a room full of people your age with nobody noticing you.

Before leaving, she goes to the library and asks for a book. The librarian gives her one with a kind smile and she tries to return it, but by this time of the day she just feels tired.

The way home is the same as always, streets with older people going on with their lives. Three years ago, people wouldn't look so poor, but the Depression had hit hard and it was only becoming worse instead of better.

She unlocks their front door-not technically theirs and not technically a front door, since the place where her and her mammy live is not theirs and what she's opening doesn't lead into the house, but she likes to refer to it that way- and goes straight to their bed, the only one in the room. They're lucky Ms. Brennan gave them the basement room. She does her homework in silence and then grabs her book.

Their window doesn't have a good view, but it gives her light so she sits on a pillow under it until her butt goes numb. By that time, she has made good progress with her book and it's near the time her mammy comes back from work, so she gets up and tidies up the little mess she's made in that time. When the clock strikes eight, she goes up and greets the other ladies living there.

Ms. Brennan wasn't that much of a nice old lady, but she was the closest thing she had to a grandmother with the two of her own dead and buried in Ireland and Italy. Ms. Brennan got her nice if old clothes and always asked about her day, so she wasn't all that bad, even if she yelled at the other girls living there. Ms. Brennan had known her mammy since she had first come to the United States to work and live with her, and so she hadn't really hesitated to welcome them in her home after her father died.

So far in her ten years of life, this place was the only she had called home. Other girls came and went as they arrived from Ireland, but this two years they had stayed the same. People couldn't really afford to pay to live.

Her mammy comes out of the kitchen, still in her work dress, and smiles at her, kissing her forehead before sitting by her side. Today, there isn't much in her plate, but there was even less yesterday, so she won't really complain, even if she goes to bed hungry. It wouldn't be the first nor the last time it would happen.

She takes a bath before bed in the bathroom the eight of them share, scrubbing her skin well even if she doesn't have soap, because her mammy always said they may be poor, but they weren't poor enough to go dirty.

The bed she shares with her mother is big enough to fit them both, but she's not sure it will last that much longer. She's not really growing fast, but she _is_ growing.

"Sweet dreams, baby" her mammy says, kissing her forehead again, because her mammy always liked to do that, before she lifted the covers up until they covered everything from their neck down.

Winter wasn't being all that kind, and even if there was a heater, the cold sometimes seemed to seep into her bones.

The next morning, she dresses into her worn down skirt and wears two undershirts, her coat a little too tight. She knows coats are not cheap, so she just sucks it up a little and goes out without breakfast.

Her backpack is light with her lunch of plain bread, a little too stale, and her few notebooks.

The way to school is pretty much the same as the way home, so she doesn't really think as she walks. She gets into her classroom, still cold from the night before, and sits in her seat in the front. She doesn't see well from the back, but they can't really afford glasses, so she just squints when it gets too bad and if it doesn't help much, well, it's not like she can do anything about it.

The boy that sits beside her doesn't really talk to her unless he wants her to pick up something he dropped or to ask the answers for a test, so she doesn't really mind him through the day. By the end of it, she's still kind of hungry, but Mrs. Evans was kind enough to give her half her sandwich after hearing her stomach in class. She keeps half of it for later.

She doesn't go to the library that day, because she still hasn't finished the book, so she just goes out and stops before leaving. It's a little too cold for her coat, and when she goes to raise her hands to her mouth to blow some warm air into them, she hears rather than feels the tear in her back.

"Oh, no" she whispers, shrugging off her backpack and unbuttoning her coat. She's still outside, it's still cold, but the dread she feels is even colder. There is a tear big enough her hand can go thought it, and she's sure that while her mammy can sew it back together, it won't really last.

She feels like crying, but even for that she feels almost too tired.

"Are you okay?" she hears a voice from behind her "What are you doing without your coat out here?"

She raises her eyes and sees two boys coming up to her, one skinny blond and a better off brunet.

"Nothing, it's okay" she says, looking back down. Most people would be fine with that answer, but apparently not them.

"Are you sure? It looks torn" the brunet says as he kneels down beside her.

"It's okay, my backpack will cover my back on the way home" she says, hurrying to put it on again. She doesn't really need people worrying about her.

"What about after? Do you have another coat? Even that one looks a little too thin for this weather" the blond says, offering her a hand to stand up. She takes it but doesn't look at him.

"It's okay, really" she says, taking her backpack and not even bothering with putting it on before she's running away from them.

At least running keeps her warm, even if by the half of the way her sweat goes cold and leaves her shivering.

By the time she gets home, she just shrugs it off and puts on another sweater. At least inside it's not as cold as outside.

That night, her mammy mends her coat the best she can, promising to look for another one the next day.

She doesn't have much of a choice, so she puts it on again the next day, careful not to lift her arms too high so it won't rip again.

It's recess and she's sitting in her place because it's a little too cold outside and because she doesn't want to get sick wandering the school's yard, when the two boys from yesterday peek their heads through the door.

"Hey, we found you!" the blond one says, smiling and coming inside.

"You are one hard to find dame, I'll give you that" says the brunet. He has an easy smile on his face and looks older than her, maybe fourteen "Here, this is for you" he says, and only then does she notice the coat he has on his arms. It's a pretty, red thing, with buttons going down the front and pockets in the sides.

"What?" is the only thing she can think and say, because that coat is too good to be given away, still capable of holding for maybe two more winters, if not more.

"Yeah, it's for you. My sister Anne outgrew it and my ma said it's okay if I gave it to you, Izzy's too little for it anyway" he shrugs, pushing it into her hands.

"I…you want to give me a coat?" she asks, still confused. Her brow furrows, the coat in her hands weighting enough for her to know it must be warmer than anything else she owns.

"Well…yes? I thought I said that? Stevie?" the burnet looks confused as well, turning to his friend.

"You did say that, just give her time, Buck" Stevie says, looking at her with kind eyes. She can see in his worn shirt and worn scarf that he's not as well off as his friend and that maybe he understands her.

"I…I can't!" she says, trying to back away, but she's sitting against the wall so there's nowhere for her to go.

"Course you can!"

"No, coats are expensive, I can't afford it! You should keep it, save it for your other sister!" she tries to push it back into his arms but she steps away just in time and her efforts only make her stumble forward.

"C'mon, just accept it!"

"I can't pay for it!" she shakes her head, her red curls shaking with her.

"What? I'm not giving it to you for money"

"You…are not?" she cocks her head to the side.

"No! C'mon, the thing you are wearing is far too thin for this weather. I know these times are really hard, okay? Just let me do this for you" he begged, clasped hands in front of his face and everything.

"I still don't even know your name" she mumbles, tracing the buttons with her finger.

"James Barnes, but you can call me Bucky" the boy smiles, giving her his hand to shake.

"Alright, James Barnes. I'll pay you back, one day" she says, shaking his hand with all the conviction her eleven years old self could muster up. She then turns to his friend, Stevie, James had called him "What is your name?"

"Steve Rogers" he said, nodding to her and offering his hand. Despite how skinny he was, his grip was strong, warm.

"My name is Lucia Fiorello" she says.

And maybe, just maybe, she hopes they will be her friends.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ever since I could remember everything inside of me just wanted to fit in

Lucia is still eleven and she’s still poor the next day when she goes home, but at least, she’s not walking alone.

 

“…And Izzy is eight. Baby Becky doesn’t know how to talk yet, so she’s not so fun”

 

“I like babies” she says, though in all honesty, she hasn’t seen many in her life.

 

“Yeah, until they wake you up in the middle of the night and puke all over you when you move them too much. Now, I’m not sure if I’m talking about Becca or Steve here…”

 

“Jerk” Steve says, pushing James. She likes this dynamic they have, the easy way they joke and laugh and talk, even if she has known them for little more than a day.

 

“Punk” James says back to Steve, grabbing his arm and putting him in a headlock. She can’t help the small smile that slips past her lips. She buries her hands in the pockets of her red coat, warmer than she has been in a while. Her mammy had told her she’s have something today for her to give to James as a thank you gift, even thought it’d never be enough.

 

They’re older than she is, Steve being thirteen and James fourteen, but they don’t treat her like a little girl. One teacher had told her once, last year, that she didn’t sound like a kid when she spoke, and she hadn’t really understood the sad smile that had been on his face.

 

She thinks she gets it a little better now, how sad it is for her to sound mature.

 

“So, who do you live with? Do you have any siblings?” James asks once he’s let Steve go, walking with his hands in the pocket of his pants. Steve is at his left and she’s at Steve’s left, so she has to lean forward to see if James is really asking her.  


“No, it’s just my mammy and me-” she starts before Steve interrupts her.

 

“Mammy? Are you Irish?!” he asks, his eyes shining with excitement.  
  
“Only half. My father was from Italy” and she sees the way he understands in his eyes and likes the way he doesn’t mention how she talks about her father in past sentence.

 

“My ma is Irish!” Steve says, a wide smile on his face. For a moment, she thinks he might be lying, but his excitement is too genuine for it to be a lie.

 

And then she blinks, because Brooklyn is full of them, she lives with seven other Irish women, and still it makes her feel a little better to know someone else like her.

 

“What’s your mother’s name?” she asks, because it seems polite and because she’s curious.

 

“Sarah. What’s you ma’s name?” he asks in return.

 

“Nancy” she answers, and leaves it at that because what are the chances her mammy and his ma knew each other from before?

 

 

The rest of the way to her house is spend with Steve and James talking to each other, occasionally asking her things, but she doesn’t really answer and then they don’t really ask anymore.

 

“Your house’s nice” James says, almost breathless because yes, it is a nice house, except it’s not hers.

 

“Yeah, Ms. Brennan takes good care of it when she’s not working” because all the girls except her work, she’s too young they say, she has a good head on her shoulders and shouldn’t have to worry about the money. It’s a little hard not to when she sees the way it’s not ever enough.

 

“Ms Brennan?” James asks, and she thinks she gets why he’s a little confused, because her coat was too thin and her skirt is too worn, and she’s far too skinny for this place, and to have another person with them.

 

“She’s the owner” she explains, because if she wants to be their friend, she shouldn’t lie, and because she’s not ashamed of the way they live “There’s Janice and Carol, Ellis and Ailsa, Rosalie and Ms Brennan, and my mammy and I” she names them, following the way they room together. She leans on the little fence that leads to the basement, pulling her key from her pocket, because the house is usually empty and Ms. Brennan really likes the doors locked when nobody is there.

 

James stares at her for a while, and she thinks he finally understands the way they all live together because none of them can afford to live on their own and because Ms Brennan was lucky enough to have a house and kind enough to house them all on it.

 

“And you only have one bathroom? Because there’s six of us back at home and the waiting is a nightmare”

 

And she smiles a little and nods, and yes, the waiting is a nightmare when you really want to go, but at least they have hot water sometimes.

 

“Well, see you tomorrow!” James says, patting Steve on the shoulder and waving at her.

 

“Bye, Lucy” Steve smiles, and his eyes look even kinder when he smiles, if that is even possible, and she really, really wants to be their friend.

 

“Bye” she whispers, raising her hand just a little, because she’s not actually sure how you say bye to people you only just met but who have been so kind.

 

Their room is kind of cold, but she doesn’t really feel it with her new coat. She hangs it carefully, putting on a sweater and sitting under their window, finishing her book by the time dinner is ready.

 

Her mammy sits beside their little lamp for a good part of the night, knitting away the small ball of yarn she had come home with that evening as she sleeps, and by the next morning a new green scarf is waiting for one James Barnes.

 

_Thank you, James, for the great favor you have done us. I wish there was more we could do. Give our infinite thanks to you family._

_Nancy Fiorello._

 

James doesn’t want to accept it the next afternoon, but she pleads and he gives in after a while. He keeps the little letter in his jacket, and if she had to help her mammy to spell that morning, she doesn’t tell him.

 

She goes to Mass that Sunday, and they don’t usually go all Sundays, her mammy is not entirely religious, but it is a special occasion and she wants to thank God for the good boy he put on her path.

 

And as she’s exiting it, her hand in her mammy’s, she sees Steve and he sees her, and the way his face lights up makes her want to smile. She sees him tug the hand of a blonde woman, and if her hair and eyes are of any indication, she can only be Sarah.

 

“Ma!” he says when they are close enough. She’s holding her mammy’s hand tight, and she squeezes back “This is the girl I told you about!”

 

“Hello!” Sarah says, and her voice is as sweet as her accent “You must be Nancy and Lucy. It’s nice to meet you, Steve has told me so much about you” she smiles and shakes mammy’s hand, putting a hand to the top of her head.

 

“You must be Sarah” her mammy says, and she can see the moment Sarah recognizes the accent as her own.

 

“Yes. Steve, don’t be rude”

 

“Hello, ma’am” he says, and his voice is a little weird among the Irish. Her own accent is not completely Irish, but it’s not completely New Yorker like Steve’s. She’s a weird combination of growing up surrounded by Irish and going to school with Americans.

 

“Hello, Steve” her mammy says, and then she turns to Sarah and says something she can’t understand. Sarah’s eyes shine, and she looks around before she answers her. It takes her a second to realize they’re speaking Gaelic, despite the fact that her mammy never wanted to teach her much.

 

“Hey” Steve says, getting closer to her.

 

“We don’t speak much. How could you tell so much about us to you ma?” she asks, cocking her head to the side and smiling as Steve blushes.

 

“Kids aren’t usually nice to me, so it was great to meet another one with an Irish mom that would actually talk to me” he shrugs, lifting a hand to the back of his head.

 

“I like talking to you” she says, and loves the way the blush goes all the way to Steve’s ears.

 

“I like talking to you too” he says, smiling that kind, kind smile he has.  And then, after a pause “Do you understand anything they are saying?” he nods to where their mothers are still talking, a few feet from them now, almost like they don’t want to be heard.

 

“No” and she laughs, a breathless one that is almost non-existent, but in the four days they’ve know each other, he had to yet hear her laugh. It’s small, but so, so nice he feels his heart stop on his chest “My mammy never wanted to teach me. You know how people are” and she shrugs, her red curls moving on her coat covered shoulders, and her nose is covered in small freckles and she’s honestly one of the prettiest girls Steve has ever seen.

 

“Yeah” he says, although he’s not even sure what he’s saying “Yeah, I know” and then he knows what’s he’s saying, because he’s small, and skinny and sick so often it kills his ma with worry, and he’s part Irish and he doesn’t have a dad and he’s Catholic, and sometimes it seems like the list is endless “Hey” he says then, because he can’t help himself.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Do you walk alone in the mornings?” and she doesn’t know he has to walk a few blocks more if he walks by her house, but she doesn’t really have to know, and he really, really likes her company.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hey, Luce, my ma wants to know if you and your ma want to have dinner with us” Steve asks Monday morning, when it’s just them because James doesn’t really live around them.

 

“I…I…” she hesitates, pursing her lips and grabbing the straps of her bag tighter.

 

“C’mon! Please! My ma really wants you to come”

 

“I’ll have to ask mammy” she sighs, and even if she really wants to go, she’s not sure they will.

 

“Alright then, how about tomorrow? At 8?”

 

“Alright” and she smiles a small smile and nods. If she has to beg that night for her mammy to be quiet about the day, then she will, because she really likes the way Steve smiles back.

 

Lucy is twelve the first time, in a what feels like a long time, she doesn’t mind going to bed half hungry, and it feels really, really nice. There was no way Steve could know it was her birthday, but he somehow made it special all the same.

 

The next morning, all the girls give her a new pair of gloves and she tears up as she accepts them.

 

“Hey” Steve says, waiting for her outside the house like he always says he would.

 

“Hey” she says back, closing the fence behind her and falling into step with him. There´s almost a spring to her steps, because she knows they all put money for these gloves, even if they didn’t really have to.

 

“New gloves? They’re nice”

 

“Yeah, the girls gave them to me” she says, clenching her fists and feeling the soft wool in her hands.

 

She doesn’t say why and she’s grateful he doesn’t ask.

 

It’s a week later when her mammy, late at night when she’s falling asleep, whispers how to say mother is Gaelic. From then on, she teaches her before bed all she can about their language.

 

 

She’s maybe twelve and a half the day she tells Steve about her father. They’re lying side by side in a park, and she’s just finished telling him how much she likes that she’s not cold anymore when he speaks up.

 

“My dad died of mustard gas before I was born, you know?” he says, and he doesn’t look at her. She does look at him, and feels a sadness that’s just part of him.

 

“My dad got the Spanish flu. I don’t remember him” she says, and takes his hand because it does sadden her a little, how no matter what, her dad is just not there “He was Italian, and I have Italian name and surname, but I don’t feel Italian” she whispers that, because she’s always too scared to say that to her mammy. She doesn’t feel Italian, and she doesn’t feel Irish either because she’s never been to Ireland and she’s never been to Italy, she doesn’t what their country looks like, what color their seas are, she doesn’t know how to speak Italian and she’s still butchering Gaelic. But she doesn’t feel all that American either, because while she knows the color of this sea, she knows its language and she knows the oath to the flag, her name is not American, her last name is not American and not even her accent is completely American. She feels like a weird mix, too much of one to fit with the others, but never enough to fit with those either.

 

“What was his name?” Steve asks, now looking at her. A piece of grass is tickling her nose, but she doesn’t really want to look away.

 

“Cosimo” she says, and she says the way she’s heard her mammy say it, because she trusts her to say it the way it was supposed to be said.

 

“That’s…” Steve doesn’t really find a word for it, but it’s Italian alright, he thinks.  


“Weird, I know” she laughs, and the sun hits her hair just right as she closes her eyes, and Steve’s artist mind wishes he could freeze that moment, with her freckles standing out thanks to the sun she’s been getting, so he could draw her happy.

 

James’s family is loud and energic and so, so happy she doesn’t really feel she belongs there. Mrs. Barnes- Winnifred, just Winnie, dear- is kind and soft and baby Becky is a ball of sunshine that leaves spit all over her face when she kisses her cheek, and her hands and face are so so baby soft she thinks she may want twenty of her to take home. Annie is her age but doesn’t goes to her school because she wasn’t really getting good grades there and she’s gone before she can blink, out with her friends to the park and Elizabeth-Izzy, Izzy, you can call me Izzy! - is a bubbly girl with a head full of brown curls and the bluest eyes she has seen and they welcome her right in.

 

And yet, she still likes better the sound of the little old wireless back at the Rogers’, and the way Sarah would hum almost any song that came on it.

 

She’s fourteen the day her mammy sits her down and tells her she’s seeing a nice man called William and wants her to meet him. She doesn’t really realize what it means until after she’s met him, after she’s sit with him through countless meals in dinners they wouldn’t have been able to afford if it wasn’t because he’s paying and then her mammy is taking her dress shopping because they’re getting married.

 

It suddenly hits her, right as she’s trying on a blue and white dress that would have made her look nice if her hair didn’t make her seem like the American flag, and then the only thing she can think of is the fourth of July that’s getting closer and closer and how she hasn’t thought of anything to give to Steve and Steve, she has to tell Steve because otherwise she feels like she may explode.

 

James is in Steve’s apartment that evening, and she’s there only because her mammy is out with William and happy, so happy she feels like crying.

 

Sarah takes one look at her and ushers the boys out, opening her arms and whispering sweet Gaelic in her ear just like her mammy used to do when she was a child, and she sobs even harder because she feels like she’s lost that part of her mammy as she’s grown up.

 

“She’s getting married. We’re moving out of Ms. Brennan’s house and farther away from here, and I’m going to miss you all so much” she sobs against the soft fabric of Sarah’s white blouse, and if she hears the soft gasps of her friends at her back, she doesn’t show it as she keeps caressing her red hair. Sarah’s accent is so soft against her ears that evening she falls asleep right in her arms, a sigh here or there from all the crying she’s done.

 

“Is that true?” Steve whispers then, when they’re sure she’s asleep on their lumpy couch, and he sits in front of his mother with Bucky by his side.

 

“Yes” Sarah whispers without lifting her eyes or hands from the girl in her lap. She had wanted more children, maybe a girl after Steve, but Joseph had been taken far too soon from her side and then Steve had taken all her time in the most wonderful and terrifying ways and the chance had slipped right through her fingers until Bucky and later Lucy had come into their lives. She adored them and the girl specially, with the way her laugh always seemed so special because she seldom showed it, the way she sat always with her feet crossed, the way her hair was so wild when she got it wet “Nancy told me a few days ago”

 

“But Sarah!” Bucky says, loudly, and then he shrinks into himself when he sees Lucy move, looking way younger than his seventeen years of age.

 

“There’s nothing we can do, Bucky dear, Nancy is her mother and the only family she has” she shakes her head and then lets go of the girl, cupping her boys’ faces in each of her hands “We can be there for her, always, and hope she’ll come back from time to time”

 

But she knows Steve like she knows the back of her hands, and she knows he’s not going to be giving up at all and it makes her proud.

 

Steve walks her home that night, and even if the wedding is still a good few months away, she gives him the tighter hug she can muster up, pressing her face against his neck. They’re basically the same height now but she doesn’t really care being slightly taller. She likes Steve the way he has always been, skinny and sickly and so, so kind.

 

“I’ll miss you” she says, and if a few tears slip past her eyes, they ignore them.

 

“I’ll miss you too” Steve says, and kisses her temple for a good few seconds. He knows he’ll see her again tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that, but it just feels all too real right now. He’s known her for three years, but it feels like a lifetime.

 

The next morning, a few minutes before she’s supposed to leave, there’s a knock on the door. She goes to open it, because all the girls are busy with something and to be honest, she’s the youngest so she’s usually on door duty.

 

“Steve!” she says, surprised, because he usually waits outside unless it’s winter and far too cold.

 

“Hey, Luce” he smiles, but it’s not his usual smile and she notices right away “Can I speak with your mother?”

 

“Al…right? I guess? Wait here” she says, and then, because she’s lived in this house with these people since she’s one year old, she yells “MAMMY, STEVE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU”

 

She never knew what they talked. Not that day, not ever, but her mammy hugs her before she leaves for school and Steve’s eyes look a little red as they walk.

 

The wedding is by the end of the summer, when the leaves have just started to change colors and it was still warm. All the girls look beautiful and they help her mother and her to get ready. Her mother looks beautiful with her brown hair away from her face and her green eyes so so shiny.

 

She’s almost fifteen and a little lady already, so they curl her hair and paint her lips and she looks so different, so pretty for a second she doesn’t really believe she’s herself.

 

And her mother looks like the most beautiful woman in the planet walking down the aisle, and she squeezes Steve’s hand through their vows and flashes a teary smile to Bucky, because so many things are about to change, and she’ll miss them the most out of everything, because she still doesn’t speak to people at class, and teachers can only be your friends so far and she really, really liked having them as friends.

 

There aren’t many people in the wedding. Mammy doesn’t really have family, so it’s them and the girls and her boys and Sarah, and then there’s William family, his parents and all his aunts and uncles and cousins and so many people she doesn’t know.

 

“Dance with me” she says to Steve in the middle of the evening, because she really, really likes the way he holds her and Bucky is off dancing with one of William’s cousins and Sarah is looking at them with a smile so beautiful she wants to cry, because Steve is her best friend and older and so, so kind.

 

“I-I don’t know how”

 

“It doesn’t matter. They say the trick is you have to pretend you know” so she takes his hand and pulls him to his feet, pulling him towards the place everyone else is dancing at.

 

He seems hesitant to hold her, so she places his hand on her waist with a small smile, takes his other hand and rests her right on his shoulder.

 

“You can relax” she says, starting to make them move. Steve stumbles a little, but seems to regain his footing and, after a while, they are laughing on the dance floor, and he takes her hand and twirls her and she feels so happy, so carefree she wishes she could freeze the moment and never leave it. She falls back against him, her ruby red lips a stark contrast with her white skin and white teeth.

 

And maybe, Steve really really wants to kiss her.


	4. Chapter 4

It doesn’t take long, a week at most, for Lucy to realize that William doesn’t like her very much.

 

She has her own bedroom in this new house, her own bed, her own closet. Every night, she goes to bed with a full belly and her mommy now works less, because they don’t need the money as much, not when William is there to support them.

 

But William doesn’t talk to her. He doesn’t say good morning, he doesn’t talk to her beyond asking for the salt, and it’s so so different to the way he kisses her mother good morning, how he tells her all about his day and all about what he’s thinking. She can see the way William loves her mother and the way her mother loves him back, and she knows her mother loves her, with all her heart. But William doesn’t even like her.

 

At first, she thinks it’s because they don’t know each other very much. But when two weeks go by and it’s time for her to go to this new school and he still barely talked, she realized that maybe that was just the way thing would be now. And she was so used to the way the girls talked all through their dinner, different conversations happening at the same time until Ms. Brennan made them shut up and speak one at the time so she could hear them all, and Lucy would hear them even though she didn’t understand half the things they said and didn’t know half the people they named and she misses the way Ellis and Rosalie would scream in Gaelic to each other until Ms. Brennan stood up and sent them to their rooms like they were Lucy’s age.

 

This new is school is smaller and the classrooms are not as crowded and the student’s clothes are not as worn, and it feels so different to her old one she only just wants to cry.

 

That first weekend, while her mom and William are shopping, she leaves a note and takes some money her mother gave her and starts walking, walking, because she made herself remember all the street that would lead her to them. She gets lost a few times and has to ask for directions, but finally, finally gets to the place she wants to be at.

 

She can hear the wireless from the outside and a soft voice singing along with it, and before she even knocks she feels more at home than she ever would in the new house, with the big silences and cold shoulders, and for the first time school is just like home and she doesn’t like it one bit.

 

He opens the door and looks just the same he did three weeks ago, but it feels like ages have passed because she was just so, so used to seeing him every single day.

 

And she breathes his name and jumps to his neck, holding for dear life, because she missed him so much it hurt some nights and he squeezes her tight and leads her inside, and James is there-not Bucky, not ever, because that’s the way Steve calls him, the way Sarah and his sisters call him, and she’s not ever going to be as important, not really, and if she has to make an effort sometimes, because calling him Bucky seems so easy and natural, she makes it.

 

They go out and she walks between them, laughing and pushing them when they tease her too much, and she feels so normal and loved she forgets William has not talked to her in more than three days.

 

And a year passes and then boys start to notice her in class and in the street because she’s a lady now, almost sixteen, and for some reason they seem to really like red hair and green eyes, and she blushes bright red when people tell her things at the street, ducks her head and walks faster; and keeps going to wherever she was going and answers no in the school, because she doesn’t have friends there, but she’s okay with it.

 

And then some idiot has to say rude things about her when she’s out with the boys, and Steve has never, ever let someone get away with that, so he jumps to her defence and she ends up dragging him and James away because it’s not really worth it, not if that boy hasn’t even touched her.

 

“I worry about Steve sometimes, you know” James and she sit themselves in the stairs leading from Sarah’s apartment to the alley, side by side, their arms touching. Her shoes are the nicer pairs she has ever owned, bought by her mammy but paid by William, and she thinks she kind of gets why he doesn’t like her very much. He loves her mammy, after all, and she just comes along like a really old box of things they just can’t get rid of.

 

“There are many things to worry about with Steve” she whispers, trying to get the blood off beneath her fingernails. Steve’s nose had bled so much she had worried herself sick, what with his anaemia and all.

 

“I worry about what will happen when Sarah’s gone” James takes her hand to keep her from rubbing her fingers raw and places it between his.  

 

“We will take care of him, of course” she says, because it’s obvious, isn’t it? “I don’t think he’s going to go around chasing fights when he’s thirty, is he? Stubborn as he is, he must realize he can’t do everything alone. No one can” and she sighs, because she has tried and succeeded so far, but sooner or later it would blow up on her face, she just knows.

 

“I feel like I’ll end up with you two in my apartment, chasing boys and bullies off with a broom” and James laughs that deep laugh he has and passes an arm around her shoulders, and she feels like she can really, really trust him with anything, especially this secret that’s bubbling right down the surface of her chest, begging to be let out.

 

“Promise me you won’t leave him, James. I…I feel like I won’t always be there for Steve. You can” so she places her head on his shoulder and swallows the tears that threaten to fall, because she’s barely sixteen, but she’s so, so in love.

 

Time seems to be running away from her. James has been working for a year already, and this is the year Steve starts working, but she’s still at school and their age difference had never seemed so big before.

 

“My mother is pregnant” she says then and breaks down in tears, because she’s so, so scared, but at the same time so, so happy. And her mother is glowing and William is prouder than she has ever seen him, but he only ever talks to her when her mother is there and so many women die in childbirth.

 

She cries for a good while in James’ arms, so when she tells the news to Sarah and Steve, she can smile and pretend everything is perfect.

 

That July she grabs the prettiest dress she has and her most shiny shoes, asks her mother to pin her hair and only smiles when she teases her, wiling her blush to go away as she takes her teasing as her blessing. She shows up at Steve’s doorstep with a brand-new sketchbook under her arm and some pencils carefully wrapped, because her mother insisted, now that they had the money- and her mother was very specific with her gifts, especially with James.

 

But those are not for James, and as Steve opens his door, she thrusts them under his nose, smiling as wide as she can, because she loves smiling when he’s close.

 

And the afternoon is just them and Sarah and James, and it’s really okay because it’s the way it has been since she met them. And then Steve opens his presents and frowns at his pencils, all carefully labelled by her own hand, and looks at her like he’s wondering how did she know because for five years he hasn’t told her, even if she’s known for such a long time that he’s memorized all the shades of grey he can see and will never know the bright shade of red her hair is, how blue James’ eyes are and how golden is the hue that shines around Sarah’s hair when the sun hits her just right.

 

So she just smiles and places her hand on his and hopes it will be enough to get him to art school, because he’s so, so talented she still feels in awe with everything he draws even after five years.

 

And then James is raising an eyebrow at her and she’s blushing and taking her hand off, but nodding at him because yes, she’s in love and he knew that, the asshole.

 

And when it’s time to go home, Steve offers to walk her there, even if it’s farther away than Ms Brenan’s house ever was.

 

They’re quiet at first and then she lets the hand that’s hanging at her right side get closer to Steve’s, and then she’s touching his pinkie with hers and wrapping it around his. And then he’s looking at her with wide eyes, so she smiles to hide how hard her heart is beating and how nervous she is, because she’s never, ever done this and she’s not really sure she’s doing it right.

 

And then he’s taking her whole hand in his, and despite the fact that his hands are usually cold thanks to his circulation problems, she has never felt warmer.

 

He takes her to the footsteps leading to William’s house, dropping her hand and just standing there.

 

“You looked pretty today- beautiful! You looked beautiful-not that you don’t always-I mean-I” she places her hand on Steve’s lips, bold in a way she never has been before.

 

“I think I get it” she says, lowering her hand. And her lips are really close to his, and his breath is fanning across her face and the only thing she can think of is how it’d felt to kiss him right there and then.

 

So she does, and grabs his hand as she gets near so she doesn’t fall off, because suddenly her legs feel like they’re made out of wool and her belly is so full of butterflies she feels they’re going to escape through her mouth.

 

And he kisses her back, one hand cradling her cheek and his long lashes tickling her face and she grips his jacket between her fingers and tugs him as close as he can get, because she’s waited for so long it feels like a victory to be kissing him, and it’s wet and kind of messy but so, so perfect she never wants to forget the way his hand feels against her cheek, his lips pressing against her mouth and his chest against hers in a way that is so wonderfully _theirs_.

 

And they break apart but stay close because this feels so private, so intimate they don’t really want to be apart. So she rests her forehead against his and when she lets out a breathless laugh, it fans trough his face and makes him shiver.

 

“That was nice” she says and smiles at the way he nods, also breathless. He runs his thumb over her knuckles and she squeezes his hand, giving him a peck before saying good night.

 

“Wait. Luce. I…just…be my girl” he says, not letting go of her hand even if she’s already taken a step away from him.

 

And she smiles that wide smile she so seldom shows and nods, her lips then pressing together because maybe that smile was just a little bit too wide.

 

Five days later, she wakes to her mother’s screams.


	5. Chapter 5

She’s still trying to calm down by the time William comes to get her and she’s surprised she hasn’t woken up before with the whole commotion. There’s water boiling on the stove and a woman with her mother in their room as William waits on the living room.

 

She’s hesitant to get into the room, but her mother sees in her in the door and extends her hand, telling her to please, please come closer.

 

So she sits by her side, facing her and takes her hand.

 

“Your brother is not really the most sensible person, is he?” her mother says between pants, in one of the moments she has to rest between pushes, and ever since she knew she was pregnant, she has been saying it would be a boy. Something about less morning sickness, the shape of her bump different, and something about sitting on a knife instead of a spoon.

 

“I guess not” she tries to laugh, but she’s terrified. Her mother’s face is flushed and her hair sticks to her temples, but she looks determined to bring the baby to this world, and that is the mother she knows.

 

A scream rips through her mother’s throat as she pushes next, and it must hurt like hell, because in all her years, she has never heard her mother scream like that, not when she cut herself and needed five stitches, not when she dislocated her ankle, not ever.

 

“Just a little more!” the woman says, and her mother growls at her.

 

“I know, it’s not my first time!” and her accent is really evident then, her sweet voice almost filled with hate as she glares at the woman between her legs.

 

“What are you going to call him?” she asks, to take her mind off the fact the midwife doesn’t really seem to know how to motivate women.

 

“Keenan” her mother smiles and look so, so tired. Up until three days ago, they hadn’t settled for a boy name yet. When she asks why, her mother looks at her and says, “I always dreamed of calling my first boy that”

 

And she’s left wondering if maybe she should have been called something else, and when she asks her mother, she look at her with a sad smile.

 

“Your father died before he even met you, Lucy. But he always said his first daughter would be named Lucia. And I never got to argue with him about it, you know? So I named you like he would have wanted. He was so stubborn, that Cosimo” and there are tears gathering in her mother’s eyes before she has to push again, and Lucy feels so guilty for running this moment that is supposed to be sacred, to be treasured, she wants to run out of the room.

 

But then there is a cry in the air that is not her mother’s and she falls against the pillows, exhausted.

 

“It’s a boy” the woman says, placing the baby on her mother’s chest after she’s cleaned up a weird woo form his mouth. Nancy takes him, placing him in her chest so he can her heart beat, just as she did when Lucy was born. His cries stop almost immediately.

 

“He’s beautiful” her mother says, and Lucy agrees even if he’s red and blotchy and covered in blood and not really all that beautiful. She places her finger near his hand and he grips it in his fist, trying to take it into his mouth, and she lets out a breathless laugh because he _is_ beautiful and so tiny and perfect, with his flushed face and closed eyes.

 

After a few minutes, after her mother had feed him, the woman takes him outside to get cleaned and so William can meet him.

 

“Lucia” her mother says, in that little Italian accent she gets when she says her name and her father’s, so different from her natural Irish.

 

“Yes?” she asks, taking her mother’s hand again. It’s clammy and cold and not like it ever was before, and it sends a feeling of dread straight to her stomach.

 

“There are a thousand things that I wished I could have told you father before he passed away. And there are a thousand things I wish I could tell you” her mother lifts her hand to her face and traces her cheek with her finger, smiling but so, so tired.

 

“Mother?” she asks, confused, because she can tell her later, there is plenty of time after she’s rested.

 

“I love you. I’m sorry this last year wasn’t like before, when it was just the two of us. It’s my fault. I love you, Lucia. Please remember that” her mother says, and she’s looking at her like she’s trying to memorize the way she looks with her eyes filled with tears that spill down her cheeks, paler and paler as the seconds go by.

 

“What are you talking about?” she says, more forceful this time, trying to look down at her mother’s legs, but her mother’s grip is firm as she turns her head to face her.

 

“I’m sorry. You stay who you are, okay, Lucy? I love you, baby. You’re going to fine, I know it, because you’re so smart and so brave. You’re going to be so special and so important, baby”

 

“Mammy, please” and she’s crying by now, because she’s so scared and her mammy is saying goodbye, she is, and there is nothing she can do “WILLIAM!” she screams, because she doesn’t know what else to do, and her mother is closing her eyes and taking a deep breath before she starts coughing.

 

“I loved your father. More than anyone else, except you and Keenan now. More than Will. But he made me happy. Didn’t fill the hole, but it felt better. I hear him calling me, Luce. And he’s very proud of you” her mother says with her eyes closed and Lucy can hear the steps of the woman running down the hall and opening the door, but she only has eyes for her mammy.

 

“Please, mammy, don’t leave me alone. Please” she cries, shaking her shoulder to see if she’ll wake, if she’ll start laughing because her mammy always had a wicked sense of humor, bordering in cruel, and she can’t be dead, she can’t “Mammy!” she cries, shaking her harder now, waiting to see if she’ll wake and open her bright, bright green eyes.

 

The woman is pushing her aside with strong arms, pulling her away as she screams, because she can’t just make her leave her mammy. The midwife throws her to the ground and starts checking her mother over as Lucy stays where she fell, sobbing and covering her mouth with her hand because she’s always hated those horrible sounds she makes when she cries.

 

And then she’s up and running, outside the room and towards the front door. She passes William, with a bundle in his arms and silent tears running down his cheeks as he tries to sooth the baby, and then she’s outside, running barefoot and in her nightgown.

 

And she runs and runs, stopping only to catch her breath as the sobs take over every few minutes even though her chest and legs burn, running in the dark the streets she knows by heart for what feels like hours until she’s in front of a fence, yelling for them to open up, the first rays of light making themselves known through the few clouds that are in the sky.

 

“What is all of this about?” a woman Lucy doesn’t know opens the door, freezing in her tracks as she sees the trembling girl there.

 

“I…” but Lucy can’t find the words to say what she wants, and she only thinks of the woman that should have opened up, and the way her hugs were always warm to her and how she never yelled at her, not when she broke three cups in a single day, not when she tried to make a dress out of her sheets.

 

“Move aside, girl” suddenly, the unknown woman is pushed aside and Ms. Brennan appears, snatching the keys from the woman to go open the fence “Lucy, dear, what happened?” she asks, pulling the young girl into her arms and inside at once.

 

Ms. Brennan had known that child since she was a year old and her mother had been kicked out of their home, because proud, that Nancy was, refusing to go ask for help until she had quite literally nothing else to sell and nowhere to go. And she had never seen her so shaken.

 

“My mammy…” the girl manages to say and then she’s in for another round of sobs that go straight through her heart. And she knows, oh, she knows very well what has happened. She can count in one hand the amount of times she had seen this girl cry past age five.

 

So she sits her down and hugs her close as she runs her hands through her hair. This girl had been like a granddaughter to her up until she day she had left with her mammy, and she has no problem in picking up where they had left off.

 

The girl falls asleep as the other people in the place start to wake up, and since the last time she was here Rosalie and Carol have left and three other girls have arrived, but Ellis, Ailsa and Janice are still there, and they huddle around the sofa once they recognize the girl, and how could they not when they’ve known her for so long.

 

“Nancy is dead” Ms Brennan says, and the words taste like ashes, to say something like that about a girl she knew since she was just a little older than Lucy, who had come to America with such hopeful eyes and beautiful face, who had fallen for that Italian fella that adored her so fast and so hard and had seemed just radiant the day she had invited her to that little simple wedding they had, and who had only seemed half as happy for her second one.

 

“No” she hears Ailsa whisper, being hugged by Janice who’s already started crying, and then Ellis is running upstairs and she has to close her eyes so she doesn’t start crying, because the girl needed her to be strong.

 

“Where do you think you’re going?” she asks Ellis when the woman returns, shrugging on a coat. Ellis is getting close to twenty-five already but, in her mind, she’ll always be just a girl. One of her girls.

 

“To get her friends, of course” Ellis answers, already by the door. And then she remembers that Ellis is the youngest, the one Lucy told most things and probably the only one awake in the room who knows where they live. So she nods, tells her to hurry and prays the girl doesn’t wake up before she returns.

 

They sit around the girl, none of them trying to get up to get to work and they just look at her.

 

Ms. Brennan can remember clearly the face of Nancy the first time she had come to her house. Her eyes had been so wide, so innocent and so, so green and it’s like she can still hear her crying that first week, homesick to the bones. She had a splash of freckles on her nose and her smile had lighted up her whole face, with that gap between her teeth that made her look younger than she was, and she has burned in her mind how long it took to get that smile on her face again after her husband’s death.

 

And she can remember the Italian, of course she can, how couldn’t she, with how many evening he spend in her living room, _two feet and not less_ away from Nancy, throwing her looks and smiles as she had questioned him, taking the place of Nancy’s mother. And oh, did she remember that smile, because up until this day she can swear that was what made her Nancy fall in love with the fella.

 

Lucy didn’t have her parent’s smile, but God did she had a beautiful one.

 

And Ms. Brennan was sure it was going to take a while before she saw it again.


	6. Chapter 6

Steve arrives with his mother some time later, out of breath and looking scared. Ms. Brennan stands, lets him get closer to the girl and watches with careful eyes as he puts a lock of hair away from her face with such care she knows, right there and then, that this boy is not just a friend of Lucy.

 

“Her feet are bleeding” Sarah Rogers says, frowning at the feet of her son’s girlfriend. It was hard to think how, not even a week earlier, Steve had come home with the biggest smile his face could support, and had hugged Bucky and kissed her cheek with such a happiness they had been left speechless until he had explained, and then they had been so happy she only wanted to see the girl again to give her a big hug and to thank her for making her son so happy.

 

“She ran all the way here” Ms. Brenan says, putting a hand on her shoulder “I’m Saoirse Brennan. We met-”

 

“At Nancy’s wedding, I remember” Sarah nods, grabbing the hand on her shoulder and squeezing “She told me a lot about you”

 

“I think Lucy’s feet will be okay for a few more minutes. Would you like some tea? We should give them some time” she points her head to Lucy, still asleep, and Steve, kneeling at her side, looking too afraid to touch her beyond the hand he’s now holding.

 

So Sarah follows her to the kitchen, where several young women are putting together a small breakfast, and it doesn’t escape her notice how some of them have red eyes.

 

Steve doesn’t mean to wake her, he really doesn’t, but he can’t help the hand that traces Lucy’s face, her nose still red and her eyes puffy from all the crying.

 

He sees the way she comes into herself, slowly opening her eyes and looking around her, and the way her eyes dull when she realizes where she is.

 

“I was hoping it was a dream” she says, sitting up, careful not to place her feet on the floor. They hurt, but it’s a dull ache compared to the one in her chest.

 

“Luce, I’m so sorry” he says, sitting beside her and passing his arm around her shoulders.

 

“Why?” she asks, far too calm “It wasn’t your fault” and she doesn’t say it, but a small, small part of her thinks, for a second, that it’s her brother’s fault.

 

And then she remembers his cries, and the way he hadn’t opened his eyes yet before she had left, and how he had lost a mother too last night, even if he won’t remember her, and how it will be a small pain in the back of his head, because oh does she know what it feels like.

 

“It shouldn’t have happened” is all Steve says, rubbing circles on her arm.

 

“His name is Keenan” she says after a few seconds, because she hasn’t really talked to Steve since his birthday, and they were supposed to meet the next day to do something, whatever thing they could do together, and then she would have told him on what name her mammy and William had settled on “He’s…so small, Steve. So small” and she has a teary something in her face, not quite a smile, but not quite something else.

 

And the tears that Steve has been expecting and dreading surface, and she hides her face on his shoulder, her hands grabbing fistfuls of his shirt on his waist as her shoulders shake so hard he thinks it will hurt later and the only thing he can do is run his hands through her hair and hold her tight against his chest.

 

She’s wondering how come she hasn’t run out of tears when the door is opened again, and James and Izzy and Ellis come in, and the little girl runs straight to Lucy’s arms. James will later tell her that the girl refused to let him go without her and Lucy will cry a little, because that girl had a heart of gold.

 

“I’m sorry” she says, and it seems to be the only thing people can say to her lately.

 

“What for, Izzy?” and she tries and fails to keep a calm voice, and it breaks as she speaks.

 

“Cause you lost your momma and that really hurts, so I’m sorry you are hurt now, cause you and you momma are really nice and didn’t deserve it” Izzy says, all in one go, wiping tears from Lucy’s face with her hands, and then Lucy’s sobbing harder, hiding her face in Izzy’s shoulder because her mammy really really didn’t deserve it. The young girl pats her hair and lets her cry in a way that seems too mature for her.

 

Ms. Brennan, Sarah and the boys take her home. They have already taken her mother’s corpse, and she’s thankful because she’s not sure what she would have done if they hadn’t.

 

William’s witch of a mother is there, the woman who never quite liked her mammy and had hated Lucy with all of her guts, looking at her like the burden she so often felt she was and like she’ll do everything by herself and then sneer down on them, so Sarah and Ms. Brennan take charge and the boys go with her to her room, where they wait outside while she changes out of the dirty nightgown she just wants to burn.

 

They sit with her in her room, her feet dangling so she won’t make her wounds worse, and they don’t speak for a while.

 

“I still can’t believe I won’t see her again” she whispers. Steve takes her hand and James gives her his shoulder to lean on “I keep expecting her to appear around the corner”

 

They don’t say anything until Sarah appears on the door, her eyes puffy, and they don’t mention how they’ve hear her yelling to William’s mother about Irish traditions and letting Lucy speak in the funeral if she wants to do so.

 

“William, his mother and Saoirse are going to the cemetery, okay sweetheart? I’m going to say here with you three. Is that alright?” and it feels nice that Sarah is asking her like she has a saying in what happens, that they don’t leave her completely alone.

 

“Okay” she says, quietly, and then “It’s not my house. William has to be okay with it”

 

“He’s okay with it, sweetheart” Sarah assures her, but doesn’t say if she had to convince him.

 

“Okay” she answers again. Steve puts his other hand over the one he’s already holding, and she turns to look at him but can’t bring herself to smile.

 

James helps her find a dress for the funeral while Steve sketches something in the sketchbook he keeps in her home, among other things the boys kept around her room with how often they are over, like the pair of coats in the hallway closet and the pair of shoes in case it rained.  They are all more expensive than they’d like, paid all by William under her mother’s command.

 

It keeps going around and around her head, with what her mother told her the night before, if she didn’t marry him just so they could get out of the poverty they had always lived in. She wants to think not.

 

They are laying down the dress and looking for shoes when a cry echoes through the house, and Lucy really didn’t mean to forget her brother was still in the house, but there are thousands of things in her mind and he’s so new in there that he just slipped.

 

So she pushes through the pain in her feet and runs towards the nursery, getting there before Sarah. She looks down at the red-faced baby and picks him up the way Winnie taught her to do with Becky, rocking and hushing him, because she really can’t stand to hear him cry and not do anything.

 

She caresses his chubby cheek with her finger, not noticing when Sarah gets there with the boys, and lets out a sigh when he moves his head in search for her finger, not crying anymore.

 

“He’s hungry” Sarah says, coming to stand beside her and looking down at the baby “He has her hair”

 

“Yes, he does” she says, trying really hard not to cry, because honestly everything reminds her of how she’s not seeing her mammy again.

 

“I’ll go see if there is any milk, okay?” and Sarah places her hands around her upper arms and she feels safe for a moment.

 

“There isn’t. Or there wasn’t last night, at least” she frowns, trying to remember if they bought any after she finished the last of it and she refuses to look away from the baby.

 

“Alright. You think you’ll be okay with him while I go buy some?” and Sarah still hasn’t let her go, and she really doesn’t want her to let go.

 

“I…Yes” she says in the end, pressing her brother against her chest more firmly, trying to put on a face of confidence.

 

“Okay. Bucky, come with me” Sarah says as she pulls away from Lucy.

 

“Yes, ma’am”

 

And then it’s just Steve and her in the nursery. He comes to her side, taking her by the elbows and pushing her towards the rocking chair in the corner. She sits after she remembers she’s not supposed to be on her feet.

 

“You’re a natural” Steve says after a few moments, squatting down on her right side and leaning on the arm of the chair.

 

“I’ve always wanted one” she says, and has to hold back her tears because she always thought her mother would be there right by her side when that happened “And it’s not that hard” she adds, as an afterthought.

 

“Yeah, right. Bet I can’t do it” Steve snorts. And, really, he should know she’s not one to back out of a challenge.

 

“C’mon then. You remember how to hold Becky?” she says, nodding for him to stand in front of her.   


“I never held her when she was so small!” he looks scared, but complies anyway.

 

“Get over it, Rogers, you’ll have to hold your kids one day” she holds her brother out, one hand under his head and the other under his butt, placing him in the crook of Steve’s arm and accommodating him.

 

Keenan seems to take to Steve, only yawning once he’s comfortable enough and, oh she’s so lucky, not crying at all.

 

“Hey buddy” Steve says, bouncing him slightly “Aren’t you a cute baby?” He has this look on his eyes that makes Lucy want to cry again, but for completely different reasons.

 

She stands and finds her place at his side, and then she’s covering her brother’s eyes because once, her mother had told her she hadn’t opened her eyes for a whole day until she realized it was the light that kept her from doing it. And Keenan opens his eyes and they are blue and grey, and a weird color that she’s sure will settle in the next few months, but it’s clear he doesn’t have William’s brown ones.

 

“I’m sure you’ll have your sister’s eyes, eh, buddy? Yeah, you’re gonna be a real charmer, especially if Buck is around to teach you” and then Steve is throwing her a small smile and looking back down to her brother.

 

“You’ll be a great father one day, Steve” she says, and her throat feels tight as she speaks. She places one hand in his arm, leaning on him to look at her baby brother and placing her finger on his fist so he can curl his hand around it in a way that has completely charmed her.

 

“That is if I have children at all” it breaks her heart, that the wonderful man in front of her doesn’t think anyone would want to build a family with him when she had agreed so easily to be his girl with everything that with it, not even hesitating when he had asked only a few days ago, even though it feels like ages ago.

 

“I believe I just told you I always wanted one” she says, and it’s early for them to speak about babies, but God does she love the man in front of her. 

 

And she really loves the smile he sends her.


	7. Chapter 7

She dresses in the dress she and James picked, pins her hair the best she can and goes to the church feeling like shit, because newborns wake up constantly in the night, and even if William takes care of Keenan just fine, she couldn’t help staying up until she felt her brother go back to sleep.

 

There are people she has never met before in the small room beside the church where they wake her mammy, people who once worked with her, and everyone says just how much they are sorry, how much they will all miss her and how wonderful she was.  No one talks of her awful humor, of her temper, of all the ugly things people do when they are alive and just seem to disappear when they die.

 

She’s thankful that Sarah and Ms. Brennan fought for it to be a Catholic funeral, because she can’t imagine saying goodbye to her mother without praying a whole Rosary for her. She’s not a pious girl, but she wants her mother to rest in peace.

 

And then they have the ceremony, where William sits on her left side with Keenan on his arms, despite the fact that she knows you don’t take newborns out of the house for a few weeks after birth, but they don’t have a place to leave him and quite honestly, she’s not sure they’d leave him even if they had one. Steve sits at her right, her hand clasped tight in his.

 

Father Lacey says, at the end of it, that it’s the moment for family and friend to say a few words, better there in the church than in the cemetery where the wind could take the words away.

 

She stands up and walks slowly, because her feet are still hurting and quite honestly, she doesn’t feel like walking fast. Father Lacey nods at her and takes her to the podium, where she takes a deep breath and tries to ignore the whispers that are going around the church, because she knows they are probably saying how brave she is for talking, even though she feels completely the opposite.

 

“I wasn’t even born when my father died” she starts, looking ahead and trying to remember the words she thought on the way here “He didn’t leave us with much, but my mammy was a stubborn woman. It took more than a year for her to seek help, and for as long as I can remember, my mammy worked along the other wonderful women who took care of me, but for a long time, it felt like it was just her and me. Once, when I was ten years old, I looked at her in the eyes and asked her if she loved me because of who I was, or if she loved me because I was her daughter” she has to stop there for a second to wipe her tears with a handkerchief Steve gave her in the morning before continuing “Both, she told me after a few seconds. I stared loving you because you were my daughter, you see, but as you grew up I started to love you for the way you laughed, and the way you always asked why, the way your nose wrinkled and the way you sounded when you were happy” she takes a shaky breath, raises her eyes and locks them with Steve’s, who is looking at her with sad eyes that must be mirroring hers, and keeps going “It took me maybe a day to realize I didn’t love my mother because she took care of me. I loved her because she was good. I loved her because she loved to laugh and because she always stood her ground. I loved her because she held me when I was scared, because she sang with the most beautiful voice and because she wasn’t perfect. I don’t think she deserved to be taken from us so soon, but I know God must have his reasons to do this to us” and she says this because she can’t exactly curse God in a church, even if there is nothing that she would like to do more, because he had no right to take her away, he didn’t.

 

She has to will herself to walk and not run when the mass is over. The way to the cemetery is long and quiet and she cries again when they lower her mammy’s coffin.

 

She looked beautiful, with a white dress and her hair styled in curls that she never bothered with before.

 

The dirt smells wet when everything is over, and there is no name yet, no headstone with her mother’s information. She can hear Keenan fuss behind her, William trying to soothe him as she falls to her knees, not really caring if it leaves her with patches of dirt in her dress.

 

“You weren’t supposed to leave yet” she says “You weren’t supposed to leave _me_. I’m alone now, mammy. I’m alone and I don’t know what to do. You were supposed to be there! You were supposed to see me married- weren’t you just so happy about me and Steve? You can’t see us now! Why?! WHY DID YOU LEAVE?!” and she doesn’t care if anyone is listening, if everyone is now looking at her sob in front of a dead woman’s place. Her mammy just left her, even if she promised she never would when she was five years old and was weeping thanks to her nightmares. It just real, now that her mother is buried.

 

Steve hugs her from the side, and she tries to make him stand, not to let him dirt his Sunday best pants, but he just holds her tighter and lets her cry for a few more minutes before William interrupts them and says it’s time to go.

 

She goes back to the house with William, that dammed empty house that lacks all of her mother’s cherry energy, and takes Keenan from him to put him down to sleep. She stays in his nursery, in the chair that was meant for her mother to sit and tries as hard as she can to make her sobs quiet.

 

William appears in the doorway, fists clenched as he looks at her with a frown.

 

“I…” he starts, taking a deep breath and steeling himself “I want you…to leave”

 

She wipes her tears with the back of her hands, nods and stands, quietly, to go to her room.

 

“I want you to leave the house…” William tells her when she’s only feet away from him. He doesn’t look at her eyes, he can’t, his eyes fixed in a spot in the floor in front of him.

 

“What?” she asks, because it can’t be happening.

 

“I want you to leave and never come back. I’m not your father and your mother is-she’s…. she’s gone” and Lucy can see the tears beginning to form on his eyes at the mention of her mother and thinks that William really must have loved her.

 

“Keenan is my brother” she says, because that has to count for something, it has to. She can’t lose him when she’s just lost her mother.

 

“And he’s my son. I’ll raise him the best I can, but I don’t want you around when I do that”

 

So she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and nods, because what else can she do? Scream? Fight? That was William’s house and she had no business in there now, only Keenan and William had made himself clear on that aspect. He locks the nursery’s door behind her and she really hopes, for a second, that he’s hating himself right now.

 

She goes to her room first and packs all she can in one suitcase. She puts as many clothes and as many shoes as she can and in the top, she puts Steve’s sketchbook and some other things the boys left around. She takes the little tin box her mammy gave her, where she keeps good money that she never spent because she didn’t feel the need to, and packs that too.

 

Then she goes to William and her mammy’s room, where she knows there is a suitcase in their wardrobe, in the back of the top. She puts it down and opens it to make sure all the things that matter are there, puts her mother’s favorite dress in there too and takes the picture her mammy always kept in her nightstand, of the both of them when she was maybe five years old. She can’t remember when they took that, can’t remember where, but her mother always had it in her nightstand, in Ms. Brennan’s house and here too. She used to look at it in the nights back when they shared a bed, smile at her and tell her she loved her.

 

She goes down, to the hallway closet and takes the boy’s coats and their boots. Bucky’s don’t fit in any of the suitcases, so she knots the laces together and hangs them around her neck. She understands where William is coming from. He never adopted her. He never _wanted_ her. But he has money, so the petty part of her wants to take as much as she can from him.

 

She wants to say goodbye to Keenan, she really does. She wants to put into memory the way he smells, the way he clenches his tiny little fist around her finger, the way he fits just right under her chin, the way he curls into himself the way all newborns do.

 

But the door is locked, so she’s left with a day and a half worth of memories of him and nothing else.

 

She goes down with her hands full, puts down the suitcases and dial the Barnes’ number. She memorized it a long time ago, before her mammy married, knowing that if something happened, Winnie would find a way to let her mammy know.

 

“ _Hello_?” a female voice answers. James’ sister. And even if she knows he doesn’t own a phone, that he must be with his mother in their apartment, she really wishes she could be hearing Steve’s soothing voice, hearing him saying everything would be alright.

 

“Annie? Hi, it’s Lucy. Is James around?” she looks around, plays with the tip of the boot that rests on her right shoulder, anything to stop the trembling on her hands.

 

“ _Yeah, they just got back. Lucy…I’m sorry, about your mother_ ” Lucy squeezes her eyes shut and takes a deep breath. Everyone always apologized.

 

“Thank you, Annie” she answers, trying to hear if William has left the nursery, but no luck. He probably would wait for the front door to be shut.

 

“ _Okay, I’ll put Buck on the line_ ” Annie tells her and she can hear when the girl yells at the top of her lungs for her brother and Winnie shouting back about no yelling inside the house. It’s so normal she has to remind herself that her mother’s death didn’t affect everyone, that not everything loved her like she did.

 

“ _Luce? Something wrong? Are you okay?_ ” James asks her and she’s so grateful to have him just…there for her.

 

“I…”and then she regrets even calling, because it’s not really his problem, right? He’s not responsible for her, never was. And even years later, she can’t forget the way they met, the kindness he showed her when he didn’t have to, and can’t bring herself to ask for a place to stay.

 

“ _Lucy?_ ”

 

“I’m sorry. I…I got sad, I guess. I’m sorry for bothering you” and she hangs up before he can say anything back, because she knows he’ll come to William’s house- never _hers_ \- in a heartbeat if she needed him.

 

She picks up her things and gets out of the house. She pauses at the end of the block and tries to decide where she’s supposed to be going.  There is really no place for her, not anymore. She could go to James’, but the thought of bothering him and his family- this perfect family with two parents and four children, who went hungry far less than she and her mother did, who had enough to give her a coat for _free_ \- doesn’t agree with her.

 

There is Ms. Brennan, but she doesn’t have room, not anymore, she had noticed the day before, and she knows the woman would give up her own bed for her, so she throws the thought away.

 

And Steve. _Steve_. She can’t even stand the idea of him knowing, of him seeing her like this, so _alone_. Steve with his heart of gold, with those blue eyes of him that could never see her sad.

 

So she sighs, looks at the sky and prays it won’t rain, because that would be just her luck, rain in July. She squares her shoulders and starts walking towards the one place she knows like the back of her hand, the one place she would ever call home, going on despite the pain in her feet, the cuts from running the same path she’s now walking stinging with every step.

 

Good, she thinks. Anything that would distract her from the mother-shaped hole in her chest.

 

And if it takes her hours to reach Brooklyn, so be it. If people stare, so be it. If she didn’t have a house, so be it.

 


	8. Chapter 8

She ends up in an alley for the night. It’s in Brooklyn, but away from where the people she knows live. The ground is freezing cold even if the air is not, so she takes out Steve’s coat, grateful that her mammy forgot to store it in the attic for the summer, and wraps herself in it. It’s not that big, actually her size, but it covers her enough that she doesn’t feel that cold. She thanks God that at least it’s summer. The brick building at her back is grounding, unmoving despite the mess in her head that threatens to make her dizzy.

 

She sleeps with one eye open, if she can call it slepp, jumping at every sound there is in fear that someone would try to rob her. She can’t allow that, because that would mean losing the last things she has, the _only_ things she owns.

 

Half the night is spend trying to think herself back in her mother’s arms, trying to picture what would have happened had Cosimo Fiorello not died. She would have two other siblings, and Keenan would be her Irish/Catholic twin, either way the irony would not be lost, and he’d have her father’s smile and her mother’s hair, he would like to hang out with James and annoy her about Steve and her gigantic crush on him, her father and him would have been watching from the window as they kissed and then he and Keenan would have given Steve the shovel talk after wishing him a happy birthday, and afterwards, when she’s already told him a thousand times to leave Steve alone, _please, dad, you’ve known him for years_ , he would have welcome him to the family and warned him about closed doors because that’s the kind of man she’s been told he was but has no way of knowing for sure.

 

But she knows she would have met Steve either way, she knows. Maybe at Mass, maybe at some Irish dance her mammy would have dragged her to, _some way_ , they would have met, because she can’t think of a world where she doesn’t have him there after losing everything.

 

At sunrise, when she can’t try to sleep anymore, she doesn’t have much to do. She doesn’t have _anything_ to do, really. She’s out of school for the summer, but she’s obviously not going back, she can’t. She has to get a job and find a place to stay, that’s her one priority. Food could actually wait for the day.

 

But she can’t bring herself to get up. She stays where she is, looking at a puddle a few feet away from her and looking out of the corner of her eye at her suitcases. Her stomach clenches painfully, she hasn’t eaten since yesterday’s breakfast, but she ignores it.

 

No one goes into the alley, one of the reasons she chose it. It’s a dead end, with some trash cans that haven’t been used in a while. She’s hiding behind them, grateful that there is no smell, when she hears someone calling a name.

 

It takes her a few moments to realize they’re calling _her_ name.

 

She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even move, hoping they’ll just keep walking. She doesn’t want them to see her, she doesn’t want them to _know_.

 

But her feet can be seen from the street and she doesn’t hide them quick enough.

 

“Lucy?! Lucy!” she hears the person, hears their footsteps and then sees them kneel down in front of her “We’ve been looking for hours now! Why are you in an alley? Why didn’t you come home with us?”

 

 _Annie Barnes_ , she recognizes.  

 

Despite being the same age, Lucia and she were never close. Anna had her own group of friends she liked to go out with, and Lucia was never more than her big brother’s friend, an occasional visitor in their home, always accompanied by Steve. Anna was probably closer to Steve than she was to her because _he_ was always around, with or without Lucy and, honestly, the only reason Lucia ever called her Annie was because she absolutely hated being called Anna.

 

Too serious, she told her the first time they ever talked.

 

Five years it took her to realize that the girl didn’t have any more friends than Bucky and Stevie. She didn’t have to realize it, not with the little time she spent with the girl, but, really, she should have. And there and then, with her sitting in front of her in a dirty alley, with purple bags under her eyes, her red hair falling from a half assed up do and empty eyes, an _orphan_ at sixteen, Annie Barnes wonders how on Earth she never noticed how lonely Lucy Fiorello was.

 

“C’mon, up! You’re coming with me” she grabs her by the arm and pulls her up. Lucy doesn’t argue, picking up all of her things and refusing to let Annie carry any of them. She’s silent all the way to their three-bedroom apartment, where Becky doesn’t hesitate to run towards her.

 

“Lucy!” she cries, running towards her with open arms. She drops her suitcases and opens her arms to the girl, catching and lifting her to put her on her hip.

 

“Hello, Becky” she says, pushing James’ boots away so they don’t hit the kid.

 

“I haven’t seen you in a while. Do you want to see my new toy? It was my birthday!” she can see Winnie in the door to the kitchen, arms crossed as she talks to Annie, stealing one look at her and uncrossing her arms. Annie seems to be talking about going to find the boys, asking her mother if she knows where they are searching.

 

“I remember. I sent you a present with your brother, remember?” she asks Becky, putting her down and placing Bucky’s boots by the suitcases near the door. Her mammy had insisted, saying they could give children toys now. Not like when you were young, she had whispered, caressing her cheek, blame so clear in her eyes Lucy had wanted to cry.

 

“It was a doll! I named her Nancy” Becky’s smile is huge, looking at her with big brown eyes that shine like the sun, so _proud_ of the name of her doll.

 

And Lucy has to close her eyes, take a deep breath and calm herself before she can nod to the girl.

 

Becky grabs her hand, pulling her along before she has a chance of saying anything else.

 

The biggest room in the apartment has two beds, a big one on one side where she knows Winnie and Arthur sleep and a smaller one where Becky sleeps. There is a corner, beside Becky’s bed, where a chest half full of toys rests. Most of them seem to be old, passed down to the youngest of the family.

 

She knows there are two other rooms, a really small one where James sleeps and barely fits, and not actually a room as much as a space divided by a curtain from the slightly bigger one where the two other girls sleep, sharing a bed.

 

She’s not sure how long it has been, but her ass is starting to go numb by the time Annie comes back with the boys. The first one to enter the room is Steve, who runs towards her as she rises, drowning her in a hug.

 

“I was so worried” he whispers into her hair, one arm around her waist and a hand behind her head. She hugs him as tight as she dares, burying her head on his shoulder and trying to melt into him “Don’t do that again, please”

 

“What were you thinking?!” comes James’ voice, startling her away from Steve.

 

“Becky, love, why don’t you go ask Annie what does she want us to play next?” she asks the girl, who takes one look at her brother and goes away. She’s not sure where Izzy is, but hopefully she’s out and doesn’t have to hear them.

 

“Bucky” Steve warns him, not letting her waist go.

 

“No, Steve. I want to know what she was thinking when she thought that going away in the middle of the night was okay!” James asks, closing the door behind him so Becky doesn’t actually come back with an answer.

 

“What? That’s not-I…” she whispers, frowning. That didn’t even make sense, she had left in the evening, not in the night. It wasn’t even dark when she left, really.

 

“We called William in the morning, alright? We wanted to see if you were okay today, after the call from yesterday. He told us you ran away last night, why did you do that?” James’ runs a hand through his hair, possibly thinking of all the dangers that the streets meant for a young woman in the middle of the night.

 

“I…I didn’t” she answers, looking at Steve, begging with her eyes for him to believe her. It’s a silent way of talking that they have. _Believe me_ , her eyes say.

 

“What do you mean?” he asks, looking at her too. _He lied to us_ , his eyes say, _tell me please he didn’t do it_.

 

“He told me to leave” she explains, turning towards James “You think I would have just left Keenan like that? Think a little, James! He’s all the family I have left”

 

And she’s not one that would have just spat words like that, but the fact that James actually thought she’s ran away when her little brother was not even four days old drives her mad.

 

“Then why did he lie?”

 

“Oh, yes, of course he’d tell you he’d just kicked his dead wife’s daughter the day before!” and she wants to control herself, but really, James is an idiot.

 

“You’re staying with us” James says, like it’s final.

 

“I can’t-” she starts, feeling Steve’s arm drop from her waist. Blindly, she searches for his hand and holds on.

 

“You will. We’ll manage, some way” James starts pacing, continuing before she can interrupt him “You’re not going out there, not when we can have you here, okay? You can go to Annie’s school-”

 

“I’m not living here like a leech-” she starts to protest, because she’s not. She had a year of that experience under her belt and she was done with the dirty feeling she got whenever William looked at her, she was.

 

“Then you get a job. But you have a home here, Lucy. You do”

 

James’ eyes are really blue, open and honest and a little desperate, and she wonders if this boy knows when to stop giving.

 

Her lower lips trembles as she nods.

 

The day after, Sarah Rogers looks at her in the eyes and tells her working in a hospital is no easy task. She’s a sweet, kind woman, but she is no liar and Lucia knows that really well.

 

So she squares her shoulders and tells her she believes her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was kind of lame, but writer's block is a bitch, so sorry. Anyway, I wanted to thank everyone that has commented and left kudos and everything else! I'm really happy people are liking this so far. If you have ideas, don't be shy and leave them in a comment! I won't promise to include them, but I'll consider them.  
> Next chapter closes 1936,and we know what happens then so...yeah, not really a good year.


	9. Chapter 9

 

Three days after she has stolen James’ bedroom, she dares opening up her mother’s suitcase. Steve is standing by the small opening in the curtain that separates the bed from Annie and Izzy’s.

 

She takes a deep breath, smiles at his encouraging eyes and opens it. She takes the photograph of them first, hanging it above the bed among James’ posters he took from the theatre when he worked there last summer.

 

Then she moves aside the dresses and trinkets until she gets to the bottom, from where she pulls out a white dress. It’s floor-length, a little long for her without any heels on, thanks to her habit of going barefoot around the house in the summer, simple and a little old.

 

“It’s my mammy’s first wedding dress. The one she wore with my dad. She bought it from a second-hand store, but she adored this thing” she says to Steve, placing it against her chest “She kept it here along with some other things. It was the suitcase we were to save in case of a fire”

 

And she knows that Keenan deserved something from their mother, but everything in there was from her mother’s life before William. Everything in there had nothing to do with Keenan at all, so she tries to swallow her guilt and keeps searching for what she wants.

 

She finds the little silver chain from where both wedding rings hang and asks Steve to put it on her. The rings are also silver since her parents were not able to afford golden ones, but they are shiny and well-loved through the years. Inside her mother’s ring, worn off by years wearing it after his death, it says Cosimo Fiorello. Inside her father’s, almost new, it says Nancy Fiorello.

 

“Mammy refused to have her maiden name on his ring” she says, fingering the rings and resting her forehead against Steve’s shoulder “Her father was a bastard that beat her mother to death. She was twenty, at the time”

 

Steve kisses her temple and holds her for a while.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s not easy. Not by a long shot, even if she just starts with basic stuff at the hospital, changing bed sheets and cleaning instruments.

 

Hospitals are not happy places, she learns. Even if she knew, she didn’t really _know_. It’s painful and tiring and not regarding in the slightest for her, seeing fragile bodies and old souls in people who live in hospitals.

 

Old people are sad. She could see in their eyes the resignation. The way their eyes said _this is it, this is where I end_. Old people looked a thousand years in their beds and she writes their names in the little board above their beds in the nicest way she can, her capital Bs a wonder of twirls and her Fs a splash of loving lines.

 

Adults depend on the occasion. Accidents leave a sad and angry impression on her, the eagerness of going back into the world seeping into her movements. Sickness are fought with the resolution that this is not the end of their line, and their hands being held by their loved ones make the smile in her mouth taste real.

 

But children? Children break her heart more than anything. Seeing little kids lying down in their stomachs in the burns ward. God, she has to run out to puke when Sarah explains to her what the marks on their legs mean, burned because they wet their beds.

 

She sees kids barely breathing smiling at her and asking her questions she answers with a knot in her throat. She sees despair in their mother’s eyes, hanging into their children with all they have, trying to hope for a live that has barely started.

 

Working in the hospital is not easy and she doesn’t have the years of experience that help Sarah take it all in her shoulders.

 

The first time someone she knows dies, she’s been there for three weeks. She’s standing in the other side of the room when she heard the woman scream, calling for a nurse, a doctor, anyone that would help her father. She can’t really help, not with the little knowledge she has that comes from watching others work, and she cries in Steve’s arms that evening, trying to push her own screams from her head.

 

She finds out later that not all of them are like that. Sometimes, it takes a while for the family to realize someone has stopped breathing, and then it’s just resignation, closed eyes and choked sobs, the relieve of a painless death almost overshadowing the grief for a second.

 

It takes a month for them to start to teach her how to be a real, practical nurse -a month in which she’s starting to get used to the rhythm of living in the Barnes’s house, giving them half of everything she earns, working out a system with James in which whoever get home first gets the bed, her stubbornness actually useful for once in her life, starting to get used to the way she now can take Steve’s hand and kiss him in the lips when she wants, the way she has bad days when she can barely speak and how she can barely remember Keenan’s face-. She leans to take blood pressure, to put injections. She starts to learn slowly but surely and Sarah smiles at her proudly when they walk home and she tells her all about what she’s learning, giving her tips and advice she keeps close to her heart.

 

It’s been almost three months before a doctor takes her by the arm, pulling her away from the patient she’s just finish helping.

 

“You’re coming with me to the TB ward” he says, slamming a table with papers of the patients into her chest “You write down everything I say and even what I don’t. Don’t get people confused or there will be trouble”

 

She doesn’t even dare to say anything, scrambling to take the table and following two steps behind. She pushes a lock of hair that has escaped from her bun and puts it behind her ear. She doesn’t miss the look the doctor sends her.

 

The TB ward is far away from where she was and she has never even gotten close to it. She knows that some rooms have beds looking into the gardens instead of the middle of the room, so they can get some light and a good view before they die. She’s not even sure if she should be getting in at all, not even sure what the steps are to get in, but the doctor walks the halls like he owns them and that’s something familiar to Lucy.

 

They’re a few steps from one of the rooms when a voice calls from the door they just passed.

 

“She’s not going in there” she turns around and sees Sarah, marching towards them determined.

 

“Excuse me?” the doctor raises an eyebrow, waiting for Sarah to approach.

 

“She’s not going in there, doctor Wells” and she notices the way Sarah tries to make herself taller, looking at him in the eye as she speaks “Lucy is not going into any infectious ward, I remember being specific when I first brought her here” and Lucy is not sure if that is true or even possible at all, really, but Sarah says it with such conviction that she could believe her.

 

“If I say she is coming with me, then she is, _nurse_ Rogers” and he spats the word like her work is an insult and sadly it is not the first time she has seen a doctor treat nurses like that “Unless you want to jeopardize your job here? It would be a shame if the Head Nurse found you unfit for work, wouldn’t it?”

 

“Sarah” she tries, but with one look Sarah makes her quiet.

 

“She can’t get in there, doctor Wells. She’s been there barely two months. I forbade her from going because she is not the most brilliant, she doesn’t have the training needed for the treatment. It wouldn’t surprise me if she confused the drugs”

 

And it should hurt, the way Sarah is speaking. It does, for a second, before she notices what she’s doing.

 

“Under who are you training?” the doctor barely looks at her, with the way he refuses to look away from Sarah.

 

“Emmm…Nur-Nurse Evans, doctor” she answers, swallowing as he finally sets his eyes on her. He takes the tablet from her hands then.

 

“Well, they do send the lost causes to her. Get out of my sight, girl. Rogers, this won’t be forgotten, and if I find you’re lying…” and he strides into the room without a nurse by his side.

 

“Why would you do that, Sarah? You know he’s married to-”

 

“I know perfectly well who he’s married to. Now, get away from here, you shouldn’t be even close to this place” Sarah ushers her out before returning to the room she was in before. And Lucy can’t get out of her head the way she coughs in the doorway, holding into it as the wet sounds escape her chest.

 

This is what Lucy wishes she could say: Sarah Rogers lives to the ripe old age of eight four, dying peacefully in her sleep, surrounded by Steve, herself, all her grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.

 

This is the truth: Sarah is fired two days later. Before ten days, Sarah Rogers coughs up blood and faints. She’s admitted to the hospital, and she never leaves alive.

 

Tuberculosis, they tell Steve when he gets there. And it’s so fucking difficult for her to know. It takes him telling a nurse if, by any chance, she’s seen a red headed nurse because he would really use her company. Gina finds her when it’s already evening and she’s getting ready to go home, and tells her of a skinny man that asked for her by the infectious diseases.  

 

She gets there, her heeled shoes echoing in the almost empty halls, and takes him into a place where not many people walk by. They just hold each other for a while, until the sun no longer illuminates the place where they are.

 

She combs back his hair and keeps quiet about the way she feels guilty. Her mother. Sarah. Was Winnifred next? Was, God forbid, Steve next, this winter? Was she cursed, destined to lose every important person in her life? She fights the urge to go, pick up her suitcases-already filled with everything she owns, seeing as she doesn’t have a place to keep them, not really, even if James emptied one of his drawers for her- and just leave for a place where she can’t get close to anyone. She sees Steve’s blue eyes looking at her and changes her mind. Even if she wanted, she doesn’t think she can leave him. Not now, when they are so lost. Not ever.

 

* * *

 

 

“When you talked back to Wells” Lucy starts, a few days before Sarah dies, not long after she was admitted into the hospital.

 

Her blonde hair is loose, wet with her sweat. She has a bloodied handkerchief in her hand and every couple minutes, she coughs into it. Still, she looks at her with love and asks what about it. Her stay in the hospital will put a dent in Steve’s pockets and, in an effort to help him, in hers as well, but she can’t really mind.

 

“You should have stood down. You lost your job and I’m working here to get some extra money anyway. I could have gotten sick either way, I talked to you every day. So why didn’t you just stand down?” she frowns, leans closer to the older woman and waits for her to stop coughing.

 

“I refused to up your chances, you know that. I still don’t want you working in this place, Lucia, please.” and Sarah looks at her in the eyes, holding her hand and gripping it tight “And because, and get this in your head and never, ever forget, you _always_ stand up”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been thinking about putting a sentence out of a song at the beginning of each chapter. If you think it's a good idea and you want to leave suggestions for past chapters, let me know!


	10. Chapter 10

 

It’s a nice service. Sarah leaves some money and it allows them to buy a decent casket to bury her next to Steve’s dad, but she still puts all her savings into it, despite Steve’s complains.

 

“I already buried my mother, Steve” she says and it tastes like ashes “I know what it feels like”

 

Oh, of course she knows what it feels like. It’s like an open wound, still fresh inside her, and Sarah’s death does nothing good to it. The grave is the only place she can visit her mammy now, so far away she can only make time for it once a month, to go and just _talk_ , tell her all about her days.

 

She knows what it feels like to lose a mother, so when she and James walk Steve back to his apartment, his eyes devoid of tears, she knows what it’s coming.

 

She hears them talk, and knows James is going to ask to come over to stay with them for a while. All Steve has to do is shine shoes, take out the trash, keep his hand to himself and stay away from the girl’s room.

 

Like Steve, gentleman, good Catholic Steve would ever sneak into her room…while other people were in there.

 

 When Steve can’t seem to find his keys, she takes them out of her purse, where she put them before leaving for the funeral because he had forgotten them. She puts them on his hand and offers him the best smile she can muster up.

 

“Thank you, guys. But I can get by on my own” Steve says, and she hates the way the words sound coming from him.

 

“But you don’t have to, love” she says, putting her hand on his face and trying not to cry, because she knows this. She knows what feeling alone feels like, what losing your last family does to you. But she also knows that, despite her wishes to be alone, she didn’t really want that back then. Despite wanting to _be_ alone, she never wanted to _feel_ alone again.

 

“We’re with you ‘til the end of the line, pal” James puts his hand on his shoulder, squeezing, and she looks at him in the eyes and hopes she’s telling him everything he should know.

 

She pushes her way into the apartment when Steve opens the door, sits on the couch and refuses to move until he sits by her side. It takes maybe ten seconds of silence before he breaks, and she holds him, his fingers curling around her shoulders, until he tires himself out and she stays by his side the whole night, sitting on the couch with his head on her lap and his feet in James’.

 

After that, it’s like they have to learn to live again. James moves out to live with Steve in a new apartment, so the rent is not as harsh, leaving her with a family that is not her own, despite the many months she’s spend with them. It’s uncomfortable, no matter how welcoming and nice and _good_ the Barnes are. She starts taking more shifts at the hospital, but none on the infectious ward again, because she knows otherwise Sarah would come down from Heaven to pull on her feet at night. She even considers taking a second job, but Steve talks her out of it. Like _he_ doesn’t have two.

 

They take down the curtain that separates her bed from the girls’, move Becky’s inside the room and she and Izzy start sharing, leaving Annie with her own bed.

 

She puts up a calendar on the room, marking all her shifts so whenever she gets there too late in the night, she just sleeps on the couch and lets each have their own bed.

 

By Christmas, she has enough money to buy small presents for everyone, even for Ms. Brennan, with whom she has dinner at least once a week. Nothing big, nothing expensive, and she cries herself to sleep that night after the dinner Winnie made for all of them, just like she cried herself to sleep on her mammy’s birthday, on Thanksgiving and every night she just missed her voice telling her good night, muffling her cries against the pillow and drying her tears every few seconds in case someone decided to come talk to her. If the girls ever notice, they don’t say anything.

 

The next morning, she dresses herself up, curls her hair and meets Steve with a fake smile that is just a mirror of his own. They’re quiet, his hands cold even through his gloves, and she has to hug him and tell him to breathe with her when he tries to muffle his cries and triggers an asthma attack.

 

And then in New Year she buys booze and brings it to Steve and James’ bachelor apartment, as she calls it, and they get piss drunk, watch the fireworks on the roof and she kisses Steve at midnight, her arms around his shoulders and his hands firm against her waist, sloppy and wet and excited as they pray and hope for new beginnings and James mocks them from a few feet away. Then they go down to their living room, where she and Steve cry for maybe ten minutes and the three of them scream their lungs out, trying to get everything bad of the year out of their body. They fall asleep on the floor, a mess of limbs barely covered with some blankets they somehow manage to find. 

 

And the next day she goes to work while her neck hurts like hell, with a hangover and wrinkled clothes, thankful that she keeps her uniform in the hospital and feeling lighter than she has in weeks.

 

When another nurse offers her a cigarette, she accepts and chokes herself in the smoke, wondering how on Earth Steve does it with his asthma, until she gets the hang of it and doesn’t stop. She buys her own packets then, keeping them hidden from the younger girls. She and Annie go out to the fire escape for a smoke some nights, when her shift has been too much and Annie just feels like it. She’s recently turned seventeen, but she feels a thousand years old sometimes.

 

And then, in one of their dates a few weeks later, Steve blushes as he tells her that James was also on a date, and that he told him not to wait him up. It’s only four o’clock, so she pulls on the arm she has hers looped around and leads the way.

 

She can’t really ignore it. Not with how Steve made her feel, how their kisses were escalating.

 

Steve opens the door and she jumps at him, kicking the door closed with her shoe. She doesn’t wear high heels around Steve, so she’s not at risk of losing her balance as she helps him find the couch, her hands tangled in his hair as he pulls her closer.

 

She falls first, her hair starting to loosen from the hairdo she put it in that morning, and Steve falls atop of her, separating their lips so they don’t knock into each other.

 

“We’re not having sex” he says, and she’s really surprised he can say it without turning into a tomato.

 

“No, we’re not” she says, and god she wants to cry, because she’s not ready for that, she’s not and he knows it, but she needs to discover Steve and needs to discover herself, needs to know what they can bring out of the other, needs time for themselves, _alone_.

 

Steve kisses her again and she answers in kind, opening her mouth like she’s seen others do, and god, how can she go back to simple kissing?

 

She grabs the back of Steve’s head and brings him closer, pushing her chest out to just _feel_ him against her, solid and real. He puts himself between her legs, taking fists of her coat into his hands.

 

“This needs to go” she says, blushed and hot, starting to unbutton it. As she undoes the top, Steve undoes the bottom and pushes it from her shoulders, throwing it into the floor.

 

He kisses her jawline, pushing his hands into her blouse to touch her bare waist and she gasps as his cold hands place themselves on her.

 

“Asshole” she whispers, letting out a breathy laugh as she searches for the buttons of his coat.

 

“Need to warm them up” Steve answers against her lips, taking them out to help her with his coat. Once it’s off, his hands go back to her waist.

 

She takes his face in her hands, kissing his lips and starting a path towards his forehead. She kisses his nose and his cheek and pulls away when she reaches the top of his face to look at him in the eyes, smiling at his flushed face.

 

“I love you, Steve” she says, and thanks Heaven she can see perfectly well up close, because her boyfriend is beautiful, with his kind, kind eyes and his hair and his nose and his everything and God, if she’s not in love, then what is she in? “I love you so much” she whispers, like it’s a secret only the two of them can share.

 

She kisses him, closing her eyes to stop the tears that threaten to well up and gaps when Steve crushes her against his body, one of his hands going to her back to keep her there while his other arm holds his weight.

 

“I love you” Steve whispers back as he buries his face against her neck, leaving butterfly kisses there “I love you, I love you, I love you” he repeats like a mantra, and then he bites her neck at the same time he pushes his hips against hers and _God_.

 

“Ah!” she moans, throwing her head back, because this is new, completely new, but it feels so so good she never wants for him to stop. She fists his shirt as his hands go higher, his thumb just barely brushing against her bra as he leaves a trail of wet kisses along her neck-

 

And then, because the world hates her, the door fucking _opens_.

 

She squeals and pushes Steve off her, throwing him to the floor, where he lands with a huff. She sits up, pushing her skirt, blouse and sweater down from where they’ve ridden up and looks over the back of the couch.

 

And, of _fucking_ course, James is standing there, dressed to the nines with a pretty girl on his arm. It takes him a second to see her, but when he does, his eyes widen.

 

“I hate you” she says when she sees the smirk appearing on his face.

 

“Lucy?” he asks, like he can’t see her there, with her hair down and tangled, and then of course Steve has to stand up, with his mussed-up hair and his ridden-up shirt and his flushed cheeks.

 

“ _Buck_ ” Steve says, glaring at him.

 

“Oh God. I don’t know how to feel about this” James says, but of course he knows, because the next second he’s laughing, having to let go of the girl’s arm to clutch at his stomach.

 

“Weren’t you supposed to be on a date, _away_ , until later?” she asks through clenched teeth, narrowing her eyes to see him better.

 

“Well- Well, maybe” he says, standing up “Lucy, this is Mary. Mary, this is Lucy, Steve’s girl”

 

And she lifts an eyebrow, because c’mon, she’s more than that, isn’t she? They’ve know each other for almost six years now, she lives with his parents because he begged them to take her in, she’s gotta be _more_ than just Steve’s girl.

 

_Isn’t she?_

 

“Lucy Fiorello” she says, extending her hand to the girl and trying to be pleasant while having her hair a mess “I’m sorry about this, we didn’t know anybody would be here” and again she glared at James, because a little warning would have been really useful.

 

God, what if they _heard_ her? She’s going to kill James.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who left kudos and commets! Not even 10 chapters and I already got over 60 kudos, wow! I love your comments, so thank you so so much!


	11. Chapter 11

Years slip through her fingers. One moment she’s seventeen and then the next she’s nineteen, and she and James have saved enough money to pay for art classes for Steve’s birthday, who tries to refuse them until she gets into his head they’re already paid for; Steve who is happy like before, who still misses his mother and fills half a sketchbook with her face so he won’t ever forget her, who fills the other half with her in their lazy days when she has no shifts and he’s already submitted his drawings to the comic company.

 

And it’s 1939 and the Nazis have invaded Poland, and it’s Hitler, _not_ the Germans, because one man so twisted cannot possibly embody the wishes of a whole nation, cannot have poisoned a whole country with his visions.

 

It seems it’s only a matter of waiting, then, for others to join the war.

 

She’s gasping against Steve’s mouth one evening, both down to their underwear despite the cold of the winter, one of his hands on her hips setting the rhythm with which she rubs herself against him and the other on her breast, when he drops the bombshell.

 

“I want to marry you” he says, breathless against her ear when she leans down to kiss his neck and she pushes herself up so fast she feels dizzy for a moment.

 

“What?” she asks, also breathless because she’d been _so_ close. It’s the only things they do, this dry sex, never actually having sex because there are so many things that could happen, but they know each other’s bodies like their own and Steve had to know she was about to come, the little asshole.

 

“Marry me” he says, sitting up.  That way, she’s a head taller than him instead of half and her thighs lose the grip on his hips that was so tight his hipbones poked at her.

 

“Why?” she asks, because they’ve never talked about it, not in the three years they’ve been together.

 

“Because I love you” he answers, and it’s really as simple as that.

 

It’s been three years, and she’s not sixteen anymore, he’s not eighteen anymore. They’re nineteen and twenty-one years old. They’ve lost their families and kept going, they’re almost all alone in the world, only have each other and, _God_ , she does love him with all her heart. 

 

“Yes” she says. “Yes, I’ll marry you” and suddenly she realizes she’s crying big fat tears that roll down her face and he peppers her face with kisses that dry them away.

 

And she doesn’t need anything more. It’s perfect because in that moment it’s just them, just Steve and Lucy and it’s more than enough, so much more.

 

And James takes her in his arms and spins her around when they tell him the news the moment he walks through the door from work, Sarah’s ring siting just right in her finger, even though she could have sworn Sarah’s hands were slimmer, her fingers longer.

 

She thinks it’s bliss, that little moment they have that evening.

 

She tells Ms. Brennan and the girls that are left from her childhood jump at her, screaming their heads off about how happy they are.  Most of them are possibly too old to get married anymore, but she finds that they do not care about that later that evening.

 

She feels Ms. Brennan eyes on her back the whole evening, and when she says goodbye, Saoirse caresses her cheek and kisses her forehead before she leaves.

 

She prays that night for mercy.

 

_Don’t let her show up on my doorstep a few years from now, with a baby on her hip and a widow before thirty._

 

They wait for the summer of 1940. It gives them time to save up money and search for another apartment while Annie, freshly graduated, goes to live with James, and they find a smaller one to live on until they decide to expand their family.

 

Neither is ready for children when a war is looming so close.

 

* * *

 

 

She goes to Ms. Brennan house the night before the wedding and Izzy and Annie follow her there. She’s a mess made of nerves, jumping up and down and eating like the world would be ending the next second.

 

“You stop that or I’ll have to fix this again!” Annie says from the couch as she sees Lucy exit the kitchen with another sandwich, maybe the third in less than an hour because if Lucy is anything, it’s an anxious eater, needle and thread on Annie’s hand as she fixes the hem of her mammy’s dress. It is, after all, what she studied in school and she had excelled at it.

 

Lucy rolls her eyes at her, waving her hand because c’mon, tomorrow her mood would probably turn around and she wouldn’t eat out of fear of puking. Annie scoffs, getting back at fixing the dress because of course Lucy had forgotten about it until the last moment, when she tried it on after washing it for the big day and realizing it was too long for her, even wearing her heels.  

 

The new girls at Ms. Brennan’s house wish her good fortune before retiring for the night. They don’t know her like the others and would be staying upstairs the next evening on their own decision while they celebrated.

 

They all move furniture and clear space for the next day as Ms. Brennan’s radio is at full volume, leaving food ready and empty glasses on the table for when they come back from the church.

 

“C’mon, Izzy, show me your moves!” Lucy smiles, taking the girl’s hands on her own and trying to get her to dance. Izzy tries to get away, but when Annie and Ellis join, she laughs and tries to follow them on their steps. Out of the four of them, Ellis and Annie are the best, adapting effortlessly to the tunes on the radio. Lucy tries to follow, but just can’t quite master all the steps.

 

Izzy looks at them, breathless, and wishes for a beginning as happy as theirs.

 

She wakes early the next day and dresses in her mother’s old dress.

 

It’s a joint effort between all the girls, getting her ready. Ellis gives her a pearl necklace, something new, and her flowers are a shade of blue that tried to match Steve’s eyes.

 

Annie paints her lips red and puts her hair up while Izzy, already fifteen years old, puts perfume on her.

 

“We need something borrowed!” Izzy yells suddenly, making Annie jump and curse at her. Ms. Brennan clicks her tongue at the vocabulary, but sighs when she realizes she can’t really ask more of a Brooklyn girl.

 

“Ma took take of that” Annie says, finishing Lucy’s hair and placing a comb on top of it. It’s silver, with small stones that shine perfectly in the light despite being made of nothing more than colored glass “She wore it to her wedding, so she wants it back, alright?” Annie winks, her perfect dress made by herself making her blue eyes stand out even more.

 

Arthur Barnes arrives with Becky to take her, Annie, and Mrs. Brennan to the church, where Winnie and James are waiting with Steve. The girls and Izzy take a taxi, and that’s all the people that will be present to her wedding.

 

“Are you nervous?” Annie asks, taking her hand. Her nails are perfectly done for the occasion and she had taken it upon herself to make Lucy’s just as perfect.

 

“Is it weird if I am? I mean, I’ve known him for years” she bites her lip, looking at Annie in the eyes. It’s weird to think they’re the same age when Annie had just graduated, and she had been working for three years now.

 

“I don’t think so. You two deserve this, you know? This happiness”

 

“Thank you, Annie” she smiles.

 

Her friend’s sister had been brilliant the last few days. Lucy did not have any female friends, at most she had co-workers, and having Annie’s support and help had been so comforting. Annie had taken it upon herself to make the dresses for almost everyone, help with the church and the food and the decorations and getting her ready, and now she was calming her down.

 

She’s hesitant to call Annie a friend, not because she doesn’t deserve it, but because she wasn’t sure Annie would want it that way. She was James’ friend, at most, she thinks, and making her uncomfortable is the last thing she would ever want after the way she had treated her.

 

“I’m glad you’re here” she tells her, laying her head on her shoulder. Annie rests hers atop Lucy’s and smiles at her father from the mirror.

 

Tradition dictates who should walk both the bride and the groom down the aisle, but there is not much tradition to be followed when they are orphans. 

 

She tries not to let it bother her, the fact that she has no father at her side, but in times like this, when it’s such an important part of the ceremony, she can’t help feeling the gaping hole in her chest in the shape of her parents, specially her mother. What she wouldn’t give to have her by her side, even for a second. Just one last word, one last look, she would settle for whatever she could if it meant seeing her again.

 

James had offered to walk her down. He didn’t like the idea of her walking alone, but it wasn’t fair for her to have someone when Steve wouldn’t. Besides, James’s place is by Steve’s side, not hers. It always had been that way, and it would not change today.

 

The church is small, but they don’t need anything big. Becky is a wonderful flower girl and Annie looks beautiful as a bridesmaid.

 

But Lucy? Lucy _shines_.

 

Despite not seeing the color of her eyes, or the color of her lips or the flowers on her hands, Steve knows his bride is the most beautiful woman on Earth. How can she not be, when she’s smiling at him as she walks, and her eyes seem to shine just so brightly? When she’s so happy and he knows he’s the reason?

 

Steve doesn’t pay much attention to what the priest says, looking at his bride and taking on every detail there is on her. Yes, he doesn’t have perfect eyesight-she doesn’t either-, but he can take on the shape of her lips and the curve of her nose just perfectly, so he can draw her on paper later and be reminded.

 

And she’s never been surer of anything more than she is of this. Of saying ‘I do’ and sharing the rest of her life with Steve. It’s scary and exciting and new and she loves every second of it.

 

And then they all go to Ms. Brennan’s house. It’s lunch time and everyone forbids her from doing anything, sitting her by Steve’s side and not allowing her to stand up for the rest of the evening.

 

They’re in the middle of the meal, all laughs and smiles when she gasps and turns to Steve, wide eyed.

 

“What? What’s wrong?”

 

“I’m not a Fiorello anymore” she whispers, blinking and furrowing her brow.

 

“No…”

 

“Well, that’s going to get some used to” she says, like it’s going to take her some effort to call herself Lucy Rogers when she’s been fantasying about that for a long time now.  

 

Her dress doesn’t last long on her once they reach their new apartment. Up until that moment, only Steve had been sleeping on it while she helped him between shifts. They don’t have much, not even a dining table, it’s not a priority for now.

 

But the moment she crosses the threshold, cradled between Steve’s arms, arms thrown around his shoulders and head resting close to his, she can start calling it home.

 

Their sheets smell like him, and the pillow she falls into is soft.

 

“I love you, Steven Rogers” she whispers against his lips as his hands follow the shape of her hips, fingers tracing the stretch marks that appeared after her period, when she finally started getting enough food to actually grow fat there.

 

“I love you too, Lucia Rogers” he whispers back at her as she traces his back, between his shoulder blades and down his spine, with just the right accent her mammy used when saying her full name and the sound of it with his last name makes her want to cry.

 

And as Steve loves her, she feels like coming home after being lost.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why. The. Fuck. Did. I. Think. Med. School. Would. Be. A. Good. Idea.  
> I'm so sorry for taking so long in updating! I haven't given up on this story, I have so many ideas for it, I swear, but school hasn't been easy, so please, a little patience! Thanks so much to everyone who has left comments and kudos!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Give me one last kiss while we're far too young to die.

 

To be quite honest, she likes the start of her simple new life. Working in a place she doesn’t hate, having a loving husband, getting by every month… it was so much more than she could have hoped for ten years ago.

 

The first few months, they get used to everything. It takes a while for Steve to stop pulling on her hair at night- which is such a weird concept for her. She hadn’t had hair past her shoulder blades since she was maybe eight, but now it bushes her butt if she throws her head back and she has taken to use it on a braided bun at the back of her head if she’s not home. It’s practical for when she’s working, and she quite likes the way it looks on her, with her fringe straight.

 

It also takes a while for her to stop kicking Steve in her sleep and for them to coordinate their bathroom times. By the time winter rolls around, however, they’re a well-oiled machine, they work seamlessly together. They do have to race to the bathroom sometimes, though, when they both come home at the same time after a long day out, and their laughter is usually loud as the other knocks on the door, because okay, yes, the other won, but that doesn’t mean to leave them alone.

 

And then Steve gets sick. _Really_ sick. She wishes she could say she saw it coming, that she knew it was going to happen, but it would be a lie. She had noticed his coughs and thought nothing of it. It was winter and Steve didn’t have the best health, and she was kind of busy with how many cases of pneumonia and flu she had at the hospital that she didn’t think one of his colds wouldn’t be cured with rest and chicken soup . She had taken extra shifts, thinking the money would be of use and God, Steve hadn’t been that sick since he was maybe… fourteen? It was the winter after she had met him, and Sarah had forbidden her to see him at first, worried she might get it too. Her stubbornness won out in the end, and she had held Steve’s hand with James when they called for the priest to come and give him the Extrema Unction.  They hadn’t thought he was going to make it out of it.

 

It feels extremely similar, this time around.

* * *

 

She gets him to the hospital, the day he collapses. She doesn’t care if she has to starve herself to death to pay for it, if they have to use up all of their saving as long as _he gets the hell better._

 

“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” she asks the evening they assign him a bed, sitting on the bed right by his hips, still using her uniform even if she had finished her shift a while ago. She had been so scared and since they still didn’t have a phone, she had run out screaming until the neighbours came to help her. She had then used the hospital phone to call James, hands and voice trembling. He had to wait to finish his day at work to come, and if she had to smuggle him in, she would. It feels selfish, but she wants all the support she can have.

 

“Didn’t want to worry you” Steve whisper, and she knows how much his throat aches with how much coughing and puking he’s been through. It has hit him hard. She can see the little beads of sweat on his forehead, darkening his blond hair to brown and making it stick to his forehead. His eyes look glassy before he closes them, trying to cough quietly into his hand.

 

“I’m your wife. Of course, I’ll worry, Steve. I love you” she takes his hand, clammy and cold to the touch, and kisses his knuckles. He’s lost weight in the last few days, another thing she hadn’t noticed, and his wedding ring dances around his finger.

 

A nurse that has always been kind to her helps James see Steve after visitor hours are over. She has gone home to sleep some hours and get cleans clothes before her shift the next day.

 

* * *

 

It takes her hours to fall sleep, and even then, she doesn’t sleep well. She’s grown used to Steve’s presence on the other side of the bed, to hears the snores a broken nose caused and his heartbeat under her ear.

 

* * *

 

Steve barely wakes the next day. Every time she goes to check on him, he’s either asleep or mumbling nonsense, not reacting when she speaks.

 

She’s scared. God, she’s so scared she has to lock herself in a closet to cry. She refuses to lose him, but this is too out of her reach. There’s nothing she can do, barely anything the doctors can do, and God, she really, really can’t lose him.

 

“I want to hate you” she tells him that night, when no one is around and she has to whisper so they won’t discover her.

 

Perks of knowing every rotation, she guesses.

 

“I really, really want to hate you, Steve Rogers. You’re just like my dad, you know? Getting sick just a few months into our marriage” she takes a shaky breath, squeezing his hand. He doesn’t react at all and she wants to cry even more.

 

She’s not pregnant. She knows she is not, there was evidence until not a week ago, the crimson of her blood a bright mocking to her dreams of being a mother, but still, she is terrified of the mere thought- she can’t end up like her mother, because _she is not her_. She’s not as strong, not as resourceful, she’s just not as _good_ and she’s terrified.

 

God, this is her fault, she thinks as she sees him rest against the pillows, his skin not much different from the sheets, bone cheeks even more prominent. There are dark bags under his eyes even though he has slept the last day without waking up and his lips are chapped, pale, and _how could she not have noticed?_

 

* * *

 

“I can’t do this” she tells James next morning, when he drops by because it’s weekend. “I can’t, James, I can’t lose him too. I wouldn’t stand it”

 

“Hey, hey, he’s going to get better, okay? And you’re not alone, Lucy, you’re not. You have my parents and Ms Brennan and your aunts and my sisters and me. You have all of us” James pulls her to his arms and kisses her forehead. It does nothing to sooth her.

 

 It takes two more days for Steve to wake, and even then he can barely keep food down. At least he’s conscious, now.

 

“You’re not sleeping, Lucy” Steve says, when she’s sitting by his side and holding his hand. It’s one of the few things she can do. Lying by his side is not possible when he has to cough so often, deeply and wetly, and usually ending up puking because of the effort.

 

“How can I? I’m missing my husband by my side” she tries to smile, but it comes out sadder than she means to.

 

She’s not fine and she knows it. She barely eats because she’s barely hungry and it’s starting to show. Her hair has even lost glow in the last week, and the bags under her eyes are big enough she looks like a racoon.

 

But how can she be fine, when this is her worst nightmare coming true? How can she be fine, when she’s losing the person she loves the most after so little time together?

 

She’s almost sure she’s cursed. There is no other explanation, no other way life can be so cruel to take everyone away from her. This is not life testing her, this is life driving her to the floor and kicking her when she’s down to make sure she doesn’t get up again, she’s sure of it.

* * *

 

 

“I love you” she whispers against him every day at night, her forehead to his temple, her nose to his cheek. Even sick, his skin in soft, warm with a low fever he can’t get rid of. He holds her hand tighter and whispers it back, moving his head slightly so he can kiss her forehead and then her lips. It’s the way Steve always says goodbye to her in the morning and how he tells her good night, first a kiss to the forehead and then a kiss on the mouth. Afterwards, he’d always rest his forehead against her, or more like she’d rest hers on him, her few inches on him making a slight difference. They stay like that for a few more moments before she has to go.

 

* * *

 

Her bed stops smelling like Steve when she washes the sheets after a nightmare, when she’s sweated through her clothes out of fear, out of sheer terror of burying Steve. His clothes sit on the dresser, untouched, perfectly ironed and folded, waiting for him.

 

He’s not dead, but their house is so empty it feels like it sometimes.

 

Two more days and he starts eating again. It’s like life has come into her again, walking into the room where he is and seeing him sitting up, talking to the man on the bed on his right side. His cheeks are now rosy, blushed healthy and not with fever. She starts crying, but she dries her tears before he can see her.

 

He doesn’t comment on her red eyes. She thinks he was scared, too.

 

She tries not to think of how much the hospital is going to cost. She refuses to take James’ money, he shouldn’t have to pay for anything. So if this month she doesn’t buy anything new, if she doesn’t buy shampoo and uses soap instead, if she doesn’t smoke and she doesn’t buy meat for herself, if she puts off getting the glasses she’s needed since she was nine for another month, no one has to know, except maybe her husband because that damn man can read her like a fucking open book.

 

Steve is allowed to go home after a few more days. He stops puking and his fever comes down until all there is left of his sickness is a nasty cough. He still needs rest and he spends the days in their bed, getting up to date on the drawings for the comic store. He hasn’t lost his job, they never even thought about firing him, but he’s fallen behind enough that they won’t pay until he catches up.

 

* * *

 

She cries the first morning she wakes up with him by her side. Opening her eyes and looking at his face first thing in the morning was something she had thought, for a few days, she would lose. Her fingers barely touch him when she caresses his cheek, trembling and trying to keep her sobs at bay. She doesn’t want to wake him up when he’s still weak. His eyelashes flutter as he dreams and his hair is golden against the sun coming through their window, his lips barely open as he breathes. She puts her fingers against his mouth, his breath warming them, and cries a little more.  

 

* * *

 

Her birthday comes and goes almost without fuss. People drop by the hospital in quick visits and at night, James comes to take them dancing because she now can drink in all states, even though she’s been able to drink in New York for a few years now, and Steve is healthy by then, enough to take her out to lunch and give her a single red rose on a shade pretty close to her hair, which is a wonder since Steve cannot see color.

 

It’s not a real one. It’s a pencil drawing of a rose in full bloom, just like she always has loved them, detailed and made with enough love it bleeds out of the paper and into her heart. It’s small details like this that remind her that, no matter what, Steve knows her the best. If anyone else was to ask which flower was her favorite, she’d tell them the cheapest one she could think of, not wanting anyone to spend money on things that would wither away with time.

 

But this? This is Steve knowing her favorite flower because she always stops to look at them when she passes them by, this is Steve knowing her favorite flower because her mother always made sure she had one in her room in William’s house, and this is Steve giving her favorite flower to her in a way that makes sure it will never die and that no money would go to waste. 

 

She puts the drawing on her nightstand-not actually a nightstand, but rather an old wooden stool- so she can look at it every day before she leaves.  


	13. Chapter 13

Five hours.

 

That’s how long the fight and following silence lasts once she finds out Steve has tried to enlist after being found unfit for combat in the drafting inspection, without telling her.

 

It then takes a few days for things to go back to normal between them. It’s mostly her fault, she guesses, but him going behind her back is something she can’t forgive easily. It hurts her and from then on it’s like a thorn on her side, a constant bother in the back of her mind, reminding her that her husband, _her best friend_ , did not trust her with something so important as him going to war.

 

It’s not that hard to understand, maybe, the fact that he doesn’t tell her because she probably wouldn’t approve at all. But how can she, when she’s so terrified losing him, when they know war is dangerous and deadly and he’s not healthy like others.

 

She’s not saying Steve is weak. She doesn’t think like others who see his disabilities as weakness, as inferiority, who look at him and see sickness and think _should be sterilized -_ instead of euthanized just because he’s white. He’s far from weak and as much of a man as any other able-bodied soldier, but when it comes to physical, when it comes down to him and some other guy that is always stronger, fastest, with sharper eyes and heavy fists…the math is not hard to do.

 

And she worries. She worries so much about him and all the fights he gets into, about his bloody noses and scrapped fists.

 

She can hear the whispers. They joke about it right in front of her, asking if she’s a mule or what.

 

“You’ve been married for a year and still no babies? Is your husband…you know, _capable_?” and the snickers bounce around her head, tainting her eyes red until she can only see the lips of the woman in front of her, pulled back into laughter as she pulls up her delicate hand over her delicate mouth to hide her delicate and straight teeth. Lucy smiles, bared teeth more than mirth, and considers being polite for a second.

 

She’s pretty proud of her right hook, thumb out and feet apart just like James taught her so many years ago, and the split lip it gives the stupid nurse, hairdo knocked off.

 

She’s getting tired of being polite all the time.

 

She wants babies. She would love to have a baby that fit as perfectly into her arms as Keenan did when she held him, a child of her own that smelled of powder and baby skin, with little curls like hers on their head and eyes as blue, with just the hint of green as Steve’s.

 

But she does not want them born in a war. They take…precautions, if you could call them that. Steve doesn’t come in her and they use condoms when they can get them, but controlling when to get pregnant is not seen very well by the goddamned society and so she has to listen to people whispering behind her back, about her infertility, about Steve’s, and isn’t it just hateful the way they blame Steve just because he’s skinny and gets sick just so often? _Weak_ , they whisper _, not being able to fulfil his role_.

 

_Fuck them_ , she whispers to herself, because no one else will say it.

 

Instead of silence, they have a screaming match the next winter, when she finds out Steve tried to enlist a second time - _third_ , actually, but she doesn’t have to know.

 

“Steve, it’s illegal what you did, okay? What if they found out? What if you went to jail? You think I’d be able to pay the fine?” she's gripping the back of chair just to be able to stand, because the mere thought of her husband at war is enough to make her light-headed.

 

“I wouldn’t have asked you to! Why are you so against it, Lucy? God, just-” Steve runs a hand through his hair, his other hand on his waist as he looks away from her, lips pursed.

 

“Because I can’t lose you, okay? How many times do I have to tell you? I-”

 

“You won’t lose me! How about a little faith here?” and he looks offended, but the only thing she can think of is his body hitting the floor the last time someone punched him, and the sickening sound his skull made against the pavement.

 

“This is beyond your control, Steve!  Why do you want to fight so much? Do you want to die?!” and she has to ask, because the other reason she thinks of is not…is not _right_ , because Steve can't be mad enough to go to war just to escape her, can he? He can't have gotten so tired of her he'd just rather-

 

“It has nothing to do with me, Lucy, please! It’s like you haven’t listened to a word I say!”

 

“I listen perfectly well, it just doesn’t make sense!”

 

It goes on for a while. At the end of it, she has a shift at the hospital and has to leave. When she comes back the next morning, Steve is not home. It’s a small relief, but at the same time, not having him there makes her stomach drop.

 

She goes to try and get some sleep, but it escapes her. The bed smells like him and his side is cold, like every time she has to sleep alone during the day, and she hates it. She misses Steve’s frozen toes and his breath across her forehead. They don’t go to bed mad, never had because going to the bed mad means the next day is awful and silent and awkward and usually it hurts.

 

She wakes up when Steve has already lunched and thank God he doesn’t have to eat raw liver anymore and can enjoy some normal food without the risk his anemia represents. She sits in the kitchen and eats the plate he has prepared for her cold, not bothering with heating it up because it’s not really worth it.

 

Once she has eaten, she goes to the living room and sees Steve looking at her from the couch, sitting with his legs apart and his elbows resting on his knees. She goes to sit beside him, quietly, back rod straight. He brushes his leg against her and she breathes again, leaning her head against his shoulder. He drops a kiss against the crown of her head, taking her hand on his.

 

They don’t really apologize, but they know they have forgiven each other.

 

* * *

 

Steve is not fit for war.

 

James is. He's athletic and young, healthy. He's not the sole provider for his home. James is the perfect soldier and they tell him in the inspection. It's only a matter of time, then, for his number to come up.

 

They spend time together, just the three of them. They go out and have dinner, they go dancing and drinking and they take James to Coney Island, where he flirts with a girl with breathtaking blue eyes and fake red hair, and  spends their bus money trying to win her a stuff toy-it leaves her thinking, then, how they now have bus money, set apart specifically for that, when back in the year she lived with William, they could give Steve and James money for the ride every time they came for a visit.  How quickly things changed.

 

* * *

 

James' number finally comes up.

 

He leaves for boot camp on the back of a military pick-up, surrounded by other young men with bright eyes and not so bright futures. She lets some tears fall and holds into Annie's hand while Becky, for all her eleven years, can't wrap her head around the fact that James is coming back, he's not being shipped off yet.

 

"Don't cry, darling! I'll be back in no time, I promise!" he yells over the voices of the other men. Becky had already spent ten minutes hanging from his neck, refusing to let go. Lucy already knows she'll be having nightmares that night, the poor thing "You write to me, okay? I promise I'll answer! Be good, Becky! I love you, mom! Bye, dad! Love ya, Iz! Keep the place clean, Annie! Don't miss me too much, Rogers! Don't do anything stupid, Steve!"

 

"Fuck off, Jim!" Annie hollers back, using the name she only ever uses when he's annoying her and she wants to annoy him back and waving her arm in a wide arch and ducking just in time the hit her mother had aimed for the back of her head.

 

And James laughs over the roar of the motor, waving back at them. He had taken into calling her Rogers after her marriage, if only to irritate her because she _quite liked Lucy, thank you very much, James_.

 

It saddens her more than she lets it show, the fact that she's kind of…reduced to  being the best friend's wife to someone she considered her best friend for more than half of her life.

 

* * *

 

Every week, she writes a letter to James. She mails it with Becky's and Annie's and Izzy's and Steve's, all of them folded and tucked into the same envelope.

 

_Dear James_ , her letters always start, and what follows is usually _Steve got into another fight_ after asking how he is. A couple start with _Dear Sergeant Barnes_ , if only to tease him a little after his quick rise through the ranks-who would have thought that his perfect aim, the one he so often used to throw peas to the space between her eyebrows at dinner back when she lived with his family, would get him to be a Sergeant without even seeing a battlefield?

 

One week, though, near the end of September, it starts with _Dear James, I'm scared_.

 

She hasn't told Steve and she wants to be sure, she _needs_ to be certain what she fears is true before she can really tell him, and there is no one else she can trust with a secret the way she has always trusted James.

 

But then two weeks later, after she has read the words on his letter maybe a thousand times, the neat little print saying i _t's all going to be alright, Lucy, I promise. You both will be wonderful_ , written in a hurry so it could reach her as soon as possible and worn down with how times she has folded and unfolded it, after she has started to come around the idea, she has to write _false alarm_ and it kills her just a little.

 

She doesn't tell Steve. She thinks that, _maybe_ , he knew all along, because his eyes dim just a little when she changes the sheets and there are the usual little spots of blood she can never manage to avoid, month after month.

 

She thinks James would have been a good name, had there been a baby at all.

 

* * *

 

 

She's walking towards the mail, being the one responsible for what will probably be the last letter to James while at boot camp, when she bumps into a man. She's not really looking up, since she gets a little dizzy if she looks at things in the distance for too long, and so she makes the man drop the things he was carrying as well.

 

"I'm so sorry!" she says, picking up the envelope she dropped and helping the man pick up his files.

 

"No, it is I who must apologize. I should have been looking" he answers, pushing up his glasses with his finger.

 

"No, I wasn't looking either" and then, because she has such a big mouth, "Is your fist language german?" and she adds a little smile at the end, because she hasn't forgotten they're at war against Germany and there is no way this man has not seen the bitter end of prejudice.

 

"Er…yes, Miss…"

 

"Rogers. Lucy Rogers. I'm sorry, that was rude, it's just that I have always liked accents and languages" and she thinks how they mostly speak Gaelic with Steve, when they don't want other people to know what they're talking, and the French she learned at school, and thinks that maybe knowing German wouldn't be so bad.   
 

"Dr. Abraham Erskine. Now, a young lady like yourself shouldn't be walking alone at this hour. Allow me to accompany you to, I assume, the post?"

 

And she doesn't see what could go wrong with it, so she takes his arm and asks if his he's a MD.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few details that I think might have gotten mixed up, because to be honest I've rewritten the start of this story at least two times: 
> 
> -Steve is completely color blind. I know it might have seemed like he could see color, but since this is not a first person narrative...yeah. He can only see browns, but since he wanted to go to art school, I can just...see him trying to memorize what things are supposed to be what color and kind of the shades that could be one color or another? idk if it makes sense.   
> -Annie Barnes dropped out of Lucy's school and went to another. I don't know if in USA you can graduate high school with a title, like, y'know, it's less than a university diploma and everything and it's usually things like mechanics and seamstress and secretaries, we can do it here where I live and it's actually what my granny did, so....yeah. I have no idea how school works over there, but I can see Lucy doing rather well in class and we know that Bucky excelled at school, so I can see them going to a good school. 
> 
> I don't know if you have any more doubts about the story? I can always answer! Thank you so much to everyone who is still here! I'm trying not to give up this story and in two weeks I'm out of school for the summer so expect more to come!


	14. Chapter 14

She keeps contact with Dr. Erskine. He's a kind, kind man that takes her under his wing and teaches her so many things, one by one.  Sometimes he swings by the hospital, always with files on his hands, she never sees what they contain but it is not unusual to see him wandering the halls, hands behind his back, hat and jacket always on place.

 

Sometimes, she sees him on the street and they stop to chat for a while, always near the Antiques shop. He's a good man that always asks after Steve, asks how he's doing, if he's been sick lately and offers advice in case he is. He never, not even once, looks at her like she's crazy when she tells him of Steve.

 

He invites her for coffee some days and paints a picture of Germany in her mind, before the war, before he was forced to leave. He tells her of his two youngest children and his wife, always a far-away look on his face that makes her assume they're dead. She tells him of her wishes to visit Ireland and Italy even though there is no one there for her. Other times they talk about the United States and the home he has made for himself here, even though it always feels empty.

 

She tries all her accents with him, the soft French she once heard on the radio, the Irish she heard while growing up, the posh English of her favorite British actress and the harsher German she imitates from him. He gives names to the things around her in his mother tongue and she tries to imitate the way they roll off his tongue and successes.

 

* * *

 

It's August of 1942 when Dr. Erskine offers her the new job. He invites her to his apartment in Queens and God, she knows she should be more careful, should be more alert and not trust someone so easily, but she calls Steve to tell him she'll be home later than usual and goes anyway.

 

He serves her tea because she doesn't really drink that much coffee and, once they both have cups steaming in front of them, they start speaking.

 

"I need you to understand, Lucie, that I ask this of you because I trust you" he starts, but it does not put her at ease "Maybe I should start from the begining. I was twenty five the first time I married. Not as young as you were when you married, but, well…our daughter was born a  year later. Tiny thing, she was. Esme" the doctor takes off his glases and cleans them with the inside of his jacket, taking a few breaths before he continues "She was very much like your Steven. Sickly. Weak. But kind. Oh, my Esme was very kind. She didn't live past her tenth birthday, you see. It destroyed my wife's heart. No matter what we did, no matter what we tried, she still got very sick, year after year " Dr. Erskine lifts his eyes and looks right into hers, pain clear as day even decades later "I do believe a broken heart can kill you, Mrs. Rogers. It did to my wife and I must admit part of it was my fault. Now, you must understand. I had just lost my only daughter.  I threw myself into work after that. I couldn't think of another child suffering like my baby did"

 

Dr. Erskine stands, his tea untouched, and goes for a file. He sits again, this time by her side instead of in front.

 

"I married again" he countinues, opening his jacket and taking out a picture "Greta was a kind woman. She gave me two beautiful children. Klaus and Marlene" he gives her the picture and she takes it slowly. It's a little bent on the corners, but it only shows it's well loved. There are two children, close on age, around eight and ten. "You would have liked Marlene. She had….cheek, I believe you call it?" he chuckles to himself, druming his fingers on the file "Hitler heard of my work. He didn't let us escape. I believe it was an outbreak of typhus…"

 

They're quiet for a little while before she speaks.

 

"How did you? Escape, I mean" she dries a lone tear that has made its way down her cheek and puts down the photograph.

 

"An Agent from the Strategic Scientif Reserve rescued me. Which is, actually, what I should have been telling you about. Now, if you decline, you must remain quiet about it. It is, after all, a goverment secret".

 

Proyect Rebirth is supposed to create super soldiers, men with perfect bodies and perfect health, stronger, faster, _better_. Dr. Erskine would need a nurse to asist him on the procedure and for that he wanted _her_. Of course, she wouldn't be just a nurse. That would be just one part of her job.  If she acepted, she would be an Agent.

 

Agent Lucia Rogers of the Strategic Scientific Reserve.

 

That is not what makes her say yes.

 

"This is but the start, Lucie. If they aprove it, it won't be for soldiers after the war is won"

 

They just don't want any more Esmes.

 

* * *

 

 

"So…ummm…" she tries to start that night, while Steve is drawing at their table. Their light is crappy at best and usually he would go sit by the window, but that day it had been different. From her spot, leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen, she can't see his face very well, a blur at best- but she can imagine the way his lashes look, long and dark as they frame his blue, blue eyes. She can imagine the way a frown would rest lightly on his face, a result of the concentration with which he draws-she can't really see him, but she has seen him so many times before there is nothing new for her, nothing she can't recall from memory.

 

“Something wrong?” he sets down the pencil on the table and focuses on her “Is it about…?” he doesn't finish his question, but his eyes travel down to her belly.

 

“No…no, it’s about something else” and she really tries not to sound disappointed because this is what they chose after hours of discussion, dammit, it had been her goddamn idea, she shouldn't be feeling the hollow feeling in her chest, shouldn't feel disappointment down to her marrow. 

 

But she does.

 

She leaves her place by the doorframe and sits in front of him, taking his hands in hers. It's a small gesture but she has always felt good with his long, cold fingers against hers.

 

"Have I ever told you about Dr. Erskine?"

 

"The man you were meeting today? Lucy, did he do something?" Steve leans over, like he only wants to protect her from whatever Dr. Erskine could have done to her.

 

"Nothing wrong, I promise you. He offered me a job" she says, and she thinks that Steve knows that she already accepted. He's always been good at reading her, far better than she is at reading him, but she thinks it must be because he is far more complex than she is.

 

"A private practice?"

 

"Not really. It's government job. Can't really tell you much, but it's for a project he has" and she really, really doesn't want to tell that she might as well be working with the military because God, that's just so unfair, isn't it? But they have no secrets, no secrets at all, at least on her side, so she continues despite the knot she feels on her stomach "I…I won't work just on the project, though. They couldn't really hire me just as a nurse" she starts playing with Steve's fingers, tracing the length of them. She turns around his wedding ring, silver and plain, and thinks of her name on the inside of it.

 

"Promise me you'll be safe?" Steve asks, closing his hand on a fist so she'll stop playing with it and look at him.

 

"I'll take care of myself. I promise you" she says, but doesn't promises safeness.

 

* * *

 

 

They make her quit her job at the hospital. It doesn't sit well with her at all, but there's not much she can do about it. She complies and starts shadowing Dr. Erskine some mornings and reporting to the SSR headquarters in New York when not with him.  James has been back for a while by then, but doesn't notice the change until he goes to the hospital to pick her up so all of them can go out and she's not there. She has to lie then, and it leaves an horrible aftertaste saying she has gotten a new job in the government and making up some details that are false.

 

They have a small firing range under the office floors and they teach her how to shoot small pistols, big rifles, revolvers that fit just fine on the side of her tight and she gets good at it; maybe not as good as she knows James is, but maybe close enough that she'll get there with time.

 

He had, once, taught her how to aim. They had used small pebbles and aimed at trees, specific knots in the wood and specific leaves. By the time the sun had set, James had laughed, ruffled her hair and called her a natural. She hadn't really believed it, because he was just so much better.

 

She tries knives and gives up halfway through. She has trouble making them stick, and focuses on other things despite knowing that knives are more useful.

 

They teach her how to fight and how to use her weight and stature into her favor, and in the free days, she teaches it to Steve. Skinny, small Steve who learns to go for a different center of gravity;  skinny, small Steve who learns how to hit precisely and efficiently. Skinny, small Steve who starts to learn how to fight with a body that can't fight like James tried to teach him. She's not a professional, not by a long shot, but she's lasting more and more against bigger and better agents, so when Steve flips her over and the carpeted ground of their small living room kicks the air out of her lungs, when he drops to his knees and asks if she's okay, she laughs and kisses him.

 

Despite the war, or maybe because of it, the SSR is not short staffed. Which puts her on desk duty and never on the field, no matter how much she wants anything but it, because she should just "leave field duty to the professionals, darling", no matter if she's been training for seven months straight with the one goal of getting out there and they've been there for less than five.

 

Steve is more than understanding, and it warms her heart the fact that he has a warm bath for her when he knows she has to train for longer than necessary, and how he massages her muscles when she can't take much more pain. He worships the new shapes her body starts to develop, the way her stomach is firm under his lips and her calves iron under his hands, the way her arms look toned and her thighs defined when she's over him.

 

* * *

 

 

Dr. Erskine spends most of his time getting things ready from the procedure rather than perfecting the formula. While not yet synthetized for the first super soldier, test have left him satisfied and convinced it is ready. And Lucy can't fight against it, not really, because despite the fact that she has worked on a hospital for years now, she has little medical knowledge, much less scientific.

 

She knows how to take blood pressure and what its normal ranges are. She knows how to draw blood and how to transport it. She knows how to put the injections and what most of them do, but she's not the kind of nurse Sarah Rogers was, not by a long shot. She never studied for it, never got a degree that said she was a nurse. Hell, she didn't even get a high school degree. She never got anything but practical knowledge, which means that, really, she's little more than a caretaker, and that was fine with her, because she liked the way older people talked to her when she went to check on them, she liked the way little kids laughed and marveled over her hair when she helped clean them, and she liked knowing that the things she did helped the hospital function.

 

But it also means that she doesn't know how to sew a wound, and her anatomy is far too general. It means she's not really suited for the job, and she tells so to Dr. Erskine.

 

"I've told you to call me Abe, fräulein" he answers, sitting in front of a microscope, just waiting. "I think you are suited, Lucie. You won't be the only one there when the procedure happens, and what you know is just enough. Not to mention that I've heard good things from the headquarters" she gives him a half smile, not really convinced. And then "Do you want to learn?"

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for all the time I was away, I have no excuse. But but but, I have a one shot that I'll try to post soon, so keep an eye out those who want to know Delmar's daughter.


	15. Chapter 15

Three weeks before the procedure, Abe takes her to where it will happen. It surprises her when they go into the Antiques Shop in the Brooklyn she has lived almost her whole life in. It surprises her even more what she finds inside.

 

"This is impressive" she breathes, looking around the room that you would never suspect existed there. She can see a place from where, most likely, people will watch, and in the middle of the room, a man toying with some wires inside a machine bigger than anyone in the room. She knows it's the chamber that will be used and that it was ready a long, long time ago, before she was even considered for the project, but she guesses that the man must be triple checking something, or maybe was just bored.

 

"Mr. Stark" Abe calls, and the man raises his head. He's wearing an expensive suit, no jacket and no lab coat over it, and the dark goggles that cover his eyes look out of place with the rest of his outfit. They go down the stairs and towards the man, stopping in the middle of the platform where the man is.

 

"Dr. Erskine!" Mr. Stark says, raising a hand to take off the protection glasses "It's good to see you" and then he looks at her, a charming smile on his lips as he takes her in.

 

Lucy is not a stranger to looks. It's not like she lives in the best of neighborhoods, and she knows her auburn hair makes people turn their heads, knows the slight tilt of her words-a small accent that has almost vanished through the years- makes people hear what she's saying more closely, makes them pay attention and take a sweeping look from the top of her hair to the tips of her toes. They usually stop on her hips or her breasts, their eyes piercing. And it always made Steve clench his fists, grip her hand tighter and grit his teeth.

 

"You too" Abe answers, taking the hand of the man and shaking it "Mr. Stark, allow me to introduce you to Agent Lucia Rogers, the nurse that has been helping me. Lucie, this is Howard Stark, of Stark Industries. He's been building the vita ray machine we talked about the other day"

 

"A pleasure, Mr. Stark" she says, taking the hand of the genius. He looks at it and notices her rings.

 

"The pleasure is all mine, Agent Rogers" he answers, all tone of charming gone to leave room for professionalism. It gains him points in Lucy's book, because she has heard rumors of Howard Stark and his womanizer ways, but he seems to respect the fact that she's married.

 

They go over who will do what, the way the machine works and what to expect when the man chosen  for the procedure gets in there, if only to get her up to date, because Abe and Mr. Stark seem to know it all perfectly fine. The rats they have been using have been alright so far, but they don't know if the same will happen with the man.

 

* * *

 

She doesn't get home before dinner that night, but she does get there before Steve. She suspects he's at James' having dinner, so she lays down to wait for him after she fixes something for her rumbling stomach. Maybe not eating lunch was not wisest idea.

 

When she wakes up, it's completely dark and Steve is removing her shoes.

 

"Hey" she smiles, extending her hands towards him.

 

"Hey" he answers, coming closer and placing a soft kiss to her lips.

 

"I was supposed to be awake when you came home" she whispers, chuckling as she passes her arms around his neck.

 

"I was at Buck's. Annie got herself a boyfriend. Nice chap" he says, and she hears him toe off his shoes before laying down beside her, her arms still around him.

 

"Mmm" she hums, moving back a lock of Steve's hair "Do you think they'll last?"

 

"Well, if she was introducing him to Bucky, I guess they're kind of serious" he answers as he shifts into his back, passing his arms around her waist and helping her lay over him.

 

"Mmm" she hums again, nuzzling her face against his chest and placing a kiss on his collar bone. She likes the way he feels warm under her, just like he has said he likes the way her weight feels on him.

 

"What about your day?" he says as he runs his hands over her hair, peppering kisses to the crown of her head every few seconds.

 

"It was alright. We went to the place where it's going to happen" she whispers, her index finger starting to trace the shapes of his neck "I met Howard Stark. He's smart, you can't deny that" she places a small kiss on the place where his neck and shoulder meet, and feels him shudder underneath her.

 

"Lucy?"

 

"How tired are you?" she asks, a smile starting to take place on her face.

 

"Not tired enough" he says, looking at the ceiling as she props her chin on his chest.

 

"You think I should tire you out? I think you'd sleep better" she watches as she places his chin on his chest, looking at her eyes.

 

"One of your best ideas, Mrs. Rogers" Steve says as she pushes herself into her elbows, hovering over her husband.

 

"I do try sometimes, Mr. Rogers" she whispers before kissing him, and she groans in the back of her throat when he licks her lower lip.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks before the procedure, the lab is a flurry of activities. Everything has to be perfect, and so they go over every step of the way over and over again. Papers are signed, vials are filled, syringes are packed after sterilization, everything is measured thrice and so, that Friday, she and Dr. Erskine can finally breathe. She'd had to give up training time for lab time, and her superiors at the SSR HQ hadn't been happy about it; she was sure they were going to put her to do paper work when the project was over instead of the field work she had been begging for.

 

Coronel Phillips has been getting on his nerves, and on Lucy's as a consequence, because there should have been more candidates. The project was for an army, after all.

 

But Abe had been adamant that there had to be a first subject, just one, and then they could see if it was really worth it, if the serum was really ready, devoid of all the bad consequences the first try had. He wanted to think that it was good, he had told her, but that there was no way that the core principle of it could be gone. That, no matter what he did, there was no way it didn't amplify _everything_ the subject was.

 

"We don't need soldiers. We need good men" and Abe was not giving up that point, no sir.

 

But, no matter what they wanted, Coronel Phillips was part of the project too, and so he was able of choosing candidates, even if the final decision was on Abe's shoulders. Most of them had been rejected, that was true, but some, the better ones, had been accepted into the project, even if Abe wasn't happy about it. It was, if only, just so Coronel Phillips stopped bothering him so much.

 

And she wishes she could talk about this things with Steve, when they laid together on their bed, which seemed to be the only time they had together as of late. Her new job was taking a toll on her and he noticed, the way she was out seconds after her head hit the pillow, and the way she slept like a rock through the night and barely heard their alarm clock on the mornings. She managed to make time for him sometimes, but he hated asking for it when he knew she could be resting. It was something that she knows has to be addressed soon or it would lead to fighting, like the last one they had when Steve had, once again, tried to enlist.

 

Abe asks, once, about him. If he'd like the serum, when they weren't using it for the war.

 

"I don't know" she'd said, because she didn't. It would be completely up to Steve if he's ever want it, and she was sure she'd never knew his answer until he was faced with the question "But he'd be a good candidate" and of that she was entirely, fiercely sure.

 

Because Steve was, down to his marrow, good. And even if James and she joked about him getting into fights, Steve never _looked_ for fights.  He didn't back down, no, but Steve was not violent, not in any way, and he never took the bait, never swung his fists first, no matter what was said. If any jab was made for him, he usually ignored them, and only reacted to protect those he cared about.

 

* * *

 

“Dress up, doll, we’re going out!” James calls as he enters their small apartment Monday evening. She's sitting on their bed, having just finished putting away clean clothes she had washed since she had the evening off.

 

“Where are we going? Is Steve with you?” she asks from the bedroom, standing up and going over where she can hear his voice.

 

“We’re going to the future” he winks, throwing the newspaper to her. As she catches it, she looks at Steve standing beside him.

 

“Steve…” she says, looking at his busted lip. That mas was not stupid, he was just too damn stubborn and noble to walk away, and she loved him.

 

“It was for a good cause” he answers, shrugging. He would later tell her about the disrespectful man and she would agree. Not because of the men serving their country in its oh so great cause- but because those people had families that yearned for them every moment of everyday, and those pictures were the way they had of feeling closer to them.

 

Connie is there waiting for them, and she takes James' arm with an ease that comes from multiple dates gone right. Lucy's not sure they're going steady, especially since the last weeks have passed waiting for the orders that James had gotten that morning, but they have seen each other enough times to be comfortable with the other and, in any case, she's nice.

 

Steve and she stay behind as they go ahead, towards the Modern Marvels Pavilion. She kind of wishes they had brought Becca with them-she was so smart, so curious, she just knows she’d like it.

 

“Oh my God!” she hears Connie say, “It’s starting!” 

 

The thing starting is a demonstration led by no other than the founder of the Expo, Howard Stark himself. Lucy had talked to him a few more times since the day she met him, as they all went over the last things for the procedure, and she had found he was charming in a funny kind of way.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Howard Stark!”

 

She sees Howard walk towards his assistants, grabbing one and planting a kiss on her lips. Of course. While he had flirted his way with any other Agent or Nurse, he had respected her and she could appreciate that.

 

“I love you, Howard!” she hears someone shout. She snorts at that; it would inflate the love that man has for himself.

 

Steve offers her peanuts, knowing how much she likes them, and she takes a handful. She pops one, rubbing the peanuts between her hands and blowing off the red peel.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, what if I told you that in just a few short years, your automobile won’t have to touch the ground at all?” now, that gets her attention. She had heard in passing his plans for the expo, as he had tried a few times to charm girls with them, but she wasn't aware he managed to perfect this enough for the public eye.

 

She has to say she is more than impressed when, as he pulls a lever after the girls takes away the tires, the car starts to float. Really float. This Stark Gravity Reversion Technology, it could change the world.

 

She looks towards Steve, who seems impressed. She can't help but grab his arm and start jumping up and down.

 

“Can you imagine all the possibilities?” she whispers towards him.

 

And then the car falls. Oh well. He did say a few years.

 

“I did say a few years, didn’t I?” she shakes her head at his words and turns to watch Steve, but he's not looking towards the stage.

 

“Steve…” she whispers, taking his hand. She knows her feelings are plain on her face, perhaps some disappointment coloring her eyes.

 

“Luce” he says, looking at her eyes with his. Those goddamn eyes she cannot resist.  So she closes her eyes and nods. They will probably fight over this when they get home, but right now, it's not like she can keep him away.

 

When James turns around to ask them something, Steve has already left.

 

“There’s a recruitment center here” is all she says, and James throws her a look that could be pity before pecking Connie's cheek and walking towards the center. 

 

She stays behind with Connie. Nothing there is new to her- not Steve trying to enlist, not James chasing after him, not the posters with propaganda. Her shoes were not new either, but they are more interesting than watching Steve and Bucky argue about this-again. 

 

 “How do you do this?” she hears Connie ask.

 

“Do what?” she asks back, lifting her head. Connie is not looking at her, but looking towards the boys.

 

“Stand here, knowing that tomorrow Bucky won’t be here, and if they take Steve…how do you it?” Lucy knows Connie has a brother fighting, but if she's looking for comfort, she's not getting any with her.

 

“How do I pretend everything is okay when I barely have family left, you mean?” she sighs. “I don’t. When I get home, I’m going to drink a cup of tea and wait until Steve falls asleep, and then I’m going to cry as silent as I can so I don’t bother him, because that man over there is like a brother to us, he and his family took me in when I had nowhere to go and he’s going to fight again in a war that’s as bloody as the Great One was. And right now my heart is breaking because Steve is all I really, surely, have left and I know that they won’t take him, but the idea that they might…God, it’s so hard. I don’t what I’d do if I didn’t have them. I think I’d just die, y’know? It would be easier” by the time she's finished, her eyes are watery and James is coming back. Connie doens't say anything, but she was sure she isn't any happier.

 

“C’mon, girls, they’re playing our song” James passes an arm around Connie and places his hand on her arm to lead them away.

 

“No, I’ll…I’ll wait for Steve, okay? Don’t worry about me” she pulls away from him softly, shaking her head.

 

“Luce” James warns her.

 

“We’ll be okay”

 

God, does she want to believe that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! New chapter, and now we're getting into the movie which I'm kind of excited about, I hope I don't disappoint!  
> If you want some MCU Peter Parker/OC content, go check out my story Of sneaking and texts!


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